carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. we are inside the magazine's headquarters in new york. what feels like facebook's never-ending crisis, one year since the cambridge analytica scandal. was elon musk really fixated on destroying a whistleblower at tesla's gigafactory? we will tell you about the allegations and how the company is responding.

first up, our global cover story for "bloomberg businessweek" subscribers. boeing 737 max 8 nightmare. two catastrophic crashes. 346 people killed and flyers across the globe taking to social media to express their fears about the plane's safety. editor jim ellis is with us. boeing, the big company story this week, the big stock story this week and the ending still yet to be determined. big story. jim: this is a company that was doing everything right. had a new ceothey four years ago. he had managed to basically ride up the value of boeing to unseen levels. revenues were clicking away. $100 billion a year. this is a company that not only were they doing everything right, but one of their main competitors, airbus, was in all sorts of trouble. a bribery scandal in a lot of management changes.

and the a-380 which had to be shut down. everyone said boeing is doing great. they had this wonderful plane called the 737 max which is an update of the 737 which started back in the 1960's. carol: it has been around for a while. jim: they have been able to continually upgrade it. the latest upgrade was the kind of plane people want nowadays. 14% more fuel efficient than previous generations. that is the hoping for new carriers, low-cost carriers, and established carriers that want to compete. everybody wanted one. boeing had an order book of 5000 of these. that is a huge amount. carol: $600 billion on orders now at risk. jim: because as people say if this plane is not guaranteed to be safe, and a lot of purchasers are saying they want to rethink. some are saying i want to cancel my order. carol: a controversial part --

so many countries led by china around the world, the european canada ultimately grounding the plane until the faa finally in the u.s. said we had to ground this plane. jim: much different situation than we normally have. most times, people wait on the faa and eu. in this case, the day after the crash, china jumped up and said no, we're not going to have our airlines fly the 737 max anymore. they account for your third of all the max's that have been delivered. carol: we do so many company stories here. i do think about companies that have been in trouble before. bp, exxon with the oil spill. i think about the corporate reputation for boeing and the future of the company and they did not get ahead of this before other countries did.

jim: they completely lost control of the narrative here. instead of talking about the software fix that they supposedly have for what people think might be -- carol: almost being defensive to some extent. jim: hey, there is nothing wrong with this. as one country after another not only said the airlines could not fly the plane, but they closed their airspace to the plane. you can see where this was headed but boeing was last to see it. after the president giving mixed signals, finally on wednesday, the president said enough, we're going to ground the plane. carol: we reported on how they president had a conversation with the ceo of boeing and it took some time before we got that grounding. jim: that is one of the issues for some of these international carriers, they are wondering whether the company was so close to the government and the u.s. that that might be a reason they

were slow to ground the plane. carol: it may be a reason why we have not gotten the black box back to the u.s. and that was a little bit of a hot potato. it ended up in france. jim: normally what happens is people are very happy to send the black box back to the u.s. which has a lot of experience handling the forensic looking at a crash. in this case, the ethiopians were saying we don't know. we think it ought to go to europe. that was sort of a slap because that sort of suggests they worried there would not be, let's just say, as truthful -- carol: regulators in bed with the company? jim: too close. carol: this is how the magazine was really smart and covering it. social media really played a role. consumers saying i want to know what plane i am flying. jim: a lot more than we typically get. part of it is because this plane is such a workhorse. it is on order by so many carriers around the world.

what happened is the social media posts are out there ended fed on itself. we ended up with newspapers outside the u.s. that were jumping. a couple of british tabloids called this the death plane. carol: we heard from jim ellis. jason kelly joining us now. we talked about boeing so much this week. jason: we wanted to get inside what actually happened, what the market reaction was. here's a snapshot of the days following that 737 incident and what happened after country after country, regulator after regulator grounded those planes. carol: we are talking about approximately in the first three days, $40 billion erased from boeing's market cap. investors did not hesitate. jason: let's point out that the stock had been trending up very nicely. dennis muilenburg doing a very good job. you can see why investors got very worried and that steep decline over just several days. carol: a big deal. jason: up next, an outbreak of banking scandals raises a big

question on why the eu is not policing itself so well. carol: why venezuela needs its oil workers back. jason: also ahead, march madness. betting makes its legal debut this year. we will talk about one company at the center of the action. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. jason: i'm jason kelly. join us every day on the radio. also, catch up on our daily show by listening. subscribe to our podcast on itunes and bloomberg.com. carol: you can find us on businessweek.com and our mobile app. in the finance section, dirty money scandals

seem to be pouring out of europe. carol: including some nordic banks that appeared to be cut handling suspicious russian money. jason: potentially funny russian money in the eu's financial system operated something like an open secret, almost tolerated until recent reports. carol: alan katz has the story from paris. alan: two things really. one of them surprisingly was the russian attack on sergei skripal, a former russian agent living in the u.k. the difference was that for the first time in a long time, europeans thought that russian actions might actually be harmful to them. this has nothing to do with money laundering. it was with a chemical agent that made him and his daughter violently ill and sent to the hospital. killed a woman whose boyfriend accidentally found a perfume bottle that contained this agent. it made people in europe wearier of russia.

americans tend to think more naturally that maybe russians have bad intentions towards americans. europeans do not really feel the same way. this attack made the difference. the other thing that changed was the danske bank money laundering, particularly in 2019 when they reported the full scope of that. $230 billion that they moved through this tiny unit they had in estonia, itself a tiny country that used to be a soviet state. the size of that shocked a lot of europeans, particularly around scandinavia who viewed for their region as very clean, very not corrupt. and the rest of the world views scandinavia the same way. i think that much money move through a danish bank was really surprising to a lot of people. jason: because then it goes to dbank and then to nordia

-- you sort of have this domino effect of sorts and people really looking much more deeply at the activities of some very well-known, and as you say, well regarded european banks. alan: that is exactly right. to step back for a minute, the russian money was going through the baltics -- lithuania, latvia and estonia. former soviet states. most of them have big russian speaking populations. there is a lot of cultural connections with them. the scandinavian banks, the ones from finland, sweden and denmark, but a lot of these bought a lot of these baltic banks. they bought their weight in to these former soviet states. when they bought them, they got the same issues the banks had and did not appear to do much about it. danske bought a bank back in 2007, and for years let russian money roll through in an ever

greater amount. yes, they bought into this issue, but they had plenty of time to do something about it and chose not to. it really was a cascade effect. danske appears to be the biggest hub of this. dbank andatie: julie others will also might have been involved with it, because all the money slushed through the baltic units of these scandinavian banks were linking to each other. carol: what is interesting -- you look at the history of the last 10, 20 years, it seemed like everyone was ok with so much russian money in particular, whether it was flowing through the u.k., switzerland, cyprus. what is interesting is we talk about how it fuels real estate in new york, london. it bought the chelsea football club. everybody seemed to be ok, but with the skripal incident and the poisoning, it became a security issue. this is a different type of threat and concern.

alan: you're absolutely right about that. it really personalized it for a lot of people. the first point when russians and russian money became less wanted was after russia invaded crimea in 2014. the u.s. and the european union imposed sanctions on a series of russian individuals and russian companies, and to a lesser extent, on russian banks and companies. that was the first point when russian money, from a legal and political perspective, became more suspect. until then, everyone was happy to have russian money. it seemed more of an advantage to the west and the problem for russia, not a problem for the west. starting in 2014, it started to be a problem. more in the u.s. than europe. in europe, it suddenly became, well, it is not just russian money. russia might be acting in a way we don't really like. jason: to the economic section. a troubling side drama to the ongoing crisis in venezuela. carol: the country's opposition leader has assembled a shadow team to revive the state-owned oil company should he be able to

oust the maduro regime. jason: recruiting workers may be impossible, or at least incredibly difficult. carol: more on this story from editor cristina lindblad. , cristina: we are talking about a company that was at one point one of the best oil monopolies state oil monopolies in the world. in 2003, many thousands of its staff participated in a work stoppage to force new elections to defeat hugo chavez. as punishment, 18,000 people were fired. there was a huge brain drain essentially and they scattered all over the world. they went to saudi arabia, they went to canada, which have similar types of heavy crude that venezuela has. that know-how is very valuable.

now, they are being -- people are reaching out to these folks saying, "would you come back? , would you be ready to come back if there was a change in power?" jason: before we get to that, i want to go back to that initial launching them into the world because what they found is they were in heavy demand, right? other places really wanted them and they went. cristina: we don't have stayedics for how many in the industry, but we know their skills were in demand. also, immediately, about a year after these mass layoffs, there was a group called oil people that started this database to keep track of all of these folks. that is this list they are managing. that is how they are reaching out. carol: they went to some coveted places like the middle east, saudi aramco. cristina: right.

some in a chinese owned company that has operations in canada. we found -- not everybody landed on their feet. because that was the first wave of the exodus. it has been trickling on through the years so it started with this kind of white-collar and it is now blue-collar. everyone who is -- rig operators, truck drivers, oil hands. people's salaries cannot keep them alive. carol: you know better than most there are so many different battle fronts when it comes to venezuela, but if you go around the country, you have a turnaround this company and you need the employees. they've got to figure out a way to bring back people. cristina: it is going to take money but money alone would not do it. we talked to somebody who said if you manage to bring back a third of the staff -- as long as there were people that were able to teach new people, that you could do it. there is still a big question

mark. jason: next, facebook celebrates an anniversary of sorts. the cambridge analytica scandal. carol: plus, how wework is expanding efforts to trace movement in its offices. jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm jason kelly. carol: i'm carol massar. you can also listen to us on the radio on sirius xm and am 1130 channel 119 and am 1130 in new york, 99.1 fm in washington, d.c. jason: am 960 in the bay area and the bloomberg business app. carol: is facebook doing enough to protect your data? we are talking about your personal information. jason: does the company actually care about fallout from last year's cambridge analytica scandal like the company says? it matter: and does

? jason: sarah frier took these questions to facebook. sarah: i want to bring us back to one year ago when the news about cambridge analytica broke. the company for years had known about that problem too, but until the media wrote about it and until senators and congressmen started calling facebook to do something, that is what they had to formulate a plan. we have seen that pattern over and over in sri lanka with cambridge analytica. with the opioid crisis on instagram. this is a company that really starts to step it up and respond once there is public pressure to do so. and then, in that case, they will say -- one of zuckerberg's lines is "we now have a broader view of our responsibility." the story is really about what that broader view entails. it is still a very reactionary posture that facebook is taking. carol: talk to us about the folks you talk to my facebook -- at facebook specifically.

head of global policy management, what does she say about facebook's ability to police its platform and about its willingness to police its platform? sarah: i found monika bickert very earnest and try to solve in trying tost solve this problem. there is only so much you can do with the resources she is given to deal with the content of 2.7 billion users across all of these platforms who are posting billions of things a day. carol: let me jump in for a second. do they have a point? we are so critical of what goes on in china in terms of -- jason: censorship. carol: of that going on there. what is the line that something like a facebook or any social media platform has to follow in terms of letting people do their own thing without policing it too much?

freedom of speech. sarah: that is the same debate they are having right now at facebook. how much can we really decide that we want our platform to not have this kind of content and how much is overreach? if we say that this information is likely to spark violence, should it be facebook that is saying that or should it be some outside groups who really have the expertise? in that case they decide it should not be facebook, that they should bring outside groups. that makes responding to the content slower, but the trade-off is you have facing the company making all of these decisions. mark zuckerberg has said he thinks it is not sustainable from his point of view, that in the future he wants facebook to just not be in charge of this in the end game. he's going to appoint this outside board of people from diverse disciplines. we don't know much about the board. we know there will be 40 people on it who make the final call on these decisions about content on facebook who are not affiliated

with the company. carol: speaking of using big data, that is the focus of the solution section. jason: from helping farmers new yields to a new wave of investment in undersea cables. carol: here's our editor, dimitra kessenides. dimitra: is it a surprise that a company like wework which is controlling, managing so much office space in the world, in the country mostly today that it is going to find a way to capture some data from that and sell it? no, it is not surprising. but how are they doing and what direction are they moving with that? because it is not just they are leasing space and releasing it to people. carol: they are getting more proactive when it comes to data. dimitra: indeed, they are investing a lot. in the last year, they acquired two companies that are companies that provide them with a lot of data. one is a conference room booking

software company. it makes software to book those rooms. in the process of you using that software to book those rooms -- it is called team -- you are providing them with a lot of data. the times when most people are looking for conference room. how many people are they looking to fill that conference room with? how long are they spending? maybe that will provide you with information you could use if wework analyzes it for you that lets you better manage and be much more efficient with your conference room. both the size of your space, how many of those rooms you have. what kind of days you make available. jason: you mentioned the idea of collecting data and selling it back to the user, which takes us to the farm. dimitra: a couple of generations ago, one of the farmers we interviewed, his grandfather used to have on the property a stack of spiral notebooks and that is how he tracks. how much was good and how much was bad? he would use that information to try to perfect the next round of crops. today, companies like bayer and

and so many other big seed -- they're in all these businesses. they are in health care, seeds. they're developing software and programs and tools. and, farmers of all sizes -- this is what is important. it is super useful both to the very large scale farmers but especially to small farmers. it could be a farm that is just several acres. the data is enabling them to do all kinds of things. to adjust based on weather patterns. to detect very early on using certain technology that are scanning. almost like facial recognition software. it is software that allows them to identify it and very early stages and whether there is a possibility of disease in a crop. you are better controlling and estimating your yields. jason: i did a story about undersea cabling. here, you have what feels a

little bit old-school, transmitting, the fastest way to get things from london to new york, it is under the atlantic ocean. dimitra: the companies that are making the biggest investments and really building these cables are the big tech companies. facebook and google, especially, are making these investments. there are ways to more easily connect very remote places. really, there is such a need for this right now because the amount of data that is flying over the internet, when you think about streaming and voice and all kinds of things, it is just tremendous. i don't think they can do this quickly enough. jason: later in the program, i will tell you about the company using data to perfect running shoes. i'm obsessed with getting faster. carol: plus, if you have dreams of becoming a pop star, in china, we will tell you about one guy who made it all happen. jason: from a twitter meltdown to a fake mass shooter and back again. we peel back allegations against elon musk and recent drama at tesla's gigafactory.

carol: it is an unbelievable story. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪ 7p5óóo

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm jason kelly. carol: and i'm carol massar. still ahead in this week's issue, we've got the pop star who things love songs like it's 2014 and topping the charts in china. jason: and maybe you are listening to the music in the most luxurious backseat on the road. carol: that's where you want to sit in these cars. rather cushy. and speaking of cars, let's get

to "bloomberg businessweek." we've got a new report on elon musk. jason: you may remember his false claim about taking it test taking tesla private, resulting in an sec lawsuit. carol: this weekend, you can read about his plot to allegedly take down a whistleblower at a text -- tesla giga factory. jason: and why the sec forced tesla to a point in a "twitter-sitter." >> the giga factory is tesla's giant battery factory. it is in an industrial park in reno. it is in the middle of nowhere and is one of the biggest buildings in the world. we spoke to some whistleblowers who worked there and had crazy stories about what went on. carol: such as? >> so it all started last june 4. the story appeared in "business insider" and said there are huge amounts of waste, that there are highd parts piled up around the factory, and that tesla was perhaps using damaged

batteries in its cars. from reading the story, it was clear there was some sort of whistleblower who had gone to "business insider." the story was, there are so many crazy things going on with tesla, people moved on right away. didn't make a huge splash. carol: another day, another crazy story on tesla. >> right, but what we found out was that elon musk was not ready to move on. he was really angry that anybody would leak and hired a team of special operatives to track down this leaker. jason: so i want to talk about the operatives. as i was reading the story, it takes a little bit of a left turn and you start to talk about uber a little bit. >> so uber had an intelligence team and one of the members blew the whistle on uber. and he said that his colleagues were spying on people, recording rival executives, recording conversations, hacking into the rival databases.

but he later took this path, but there was enough there that the ceo apologized and the head lawyer said over employees, stop -- said uber employees, stop following people around. members of this team, several sued the whistleblower for defaming them, saying it would make it hard for them to get a job. but it didn't. as soon as this came out they got jobs that tesla. jason: as soon as you read this, most people thought oh my gosh, this is really bad behavior, but elon musk thought "those are my guys." >> they have identified the leaker. his name is martin trip. he is basically a low-level assembly line junior engineer. they interrogate him for hours. he admits to it, he gets fired, tesla sues him. here is where it really gets weird. just a few hours after that, the local sheriff gets a call. .t is the giga factory it is one of tesla's security guys, and he seems worried.

he says, we have just had a threat called in. we heard that this guy, martin trip, this whistleblower is coming to shoot us up. so the sheriff goes to investigate. and he finds that the threat is is bogus. -- the threat is bogus. after the threat, the tip is discredited and the sheriff says it is not true, tesla calls reporters and says "hey, guys, did you hear there was a shooting threat at our factory? it was that whistleblower guy. he sure seems crazy." like, in the corporate world, this is so bizarre that he would publicize a shooting threat that no one would have known about if you hadn't. even on the day of the threat, while the sheriff was trying to find the whistleblower, elon musk was emailing reporters himself and saying, we just had this threat. it is this whistleblower. jason: amazing.

so as you point out, you essentially have whistleblowers effectively on both sides of this issue in a lot of ways. where does it go from here? zeke: this brings us to sean guthrow, one of the managers at the giga factory. whos actually the guy called the sheriff to tell the sheriff about the threat. and now he has been fired, and and he is saying -- he has turned whistleblower himself. he is saying that he and his colleagues on the security team went too far in their pursuit of trip. carol: right. they said they had trip followed by private investigators, they misled the police about that. they were somehow able to monitor his communications to see -- because elon musk had this theory that martin trip was working with hedge funds, short-sellers, oil companies, that there was some sort of big conspiracy going on. he really wanted his security

team to find evidence of that. so exciting.t, it's march madness time, and one gambling startup is ready for the big tournament. carol: and growing competition in online hotel bookings. we have an interview with the owner of priceline. jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm jason kelly. carol: and i'm carol massar. join us for "bloomberg businessweek" every day on the radio. you can also catch us on our radio show and our podcast at bloomberg.com. jason: and find us online at businessweek.com and our mobile app. carol: in businessweek talks, we were joined by the ceo of bookings holdings, glenn vogel. jason: we talked to him about consolidation in the online hotel reservation industry,

competition for big tech and the market for listing home rentals. glenn: i don't don't think anybody cannot be concerned about what facebook or google or amazon would do next. and that is just in the u.s. you've got alibaba, tencent, baidu. lots of really big, technology oriented people who if they wanted to perhaps could do something. the fact is, it's a lot harder than you think. we have thousands of people every day who are calling on hotels to make sure they're getting the best prices and working relationships. that is not just technology, that is boots on the ground, that's an advantage. jason: i have to ask you -- we were talking right before you came on eric, you have been on , this company for almost two decades. how has the travel business changed? how has running a travel services business changed during that time? eric: i was thinking about how much things have changed. i remember starting off on aol dial-up, trying to connect and trying to buy something -- oh my

gosh. carol: i ever travel agents, not to date myself or anything. >> well, there are travel agents. but now, when you can use your phone, what a difference, it makes things so easy. but not as easy as it should be. think about all the troubles you have had troubling. think about all the problems booking something, something goes wrong, how you fix it and the fact that you have to enter your credit card several times. we are building a frictionless solution, that is what we want at the end of the day, is that you just have to do it once and it's done, and if anything has gone wrong, some he can fix it. that someone knows what has happened -- someone knows what has happened and can fix it. when you use ai, it is figuring out where the problem is before it happens and suggesting corrections before it happens. carol: spending on technology, obviously, for the platform, but you are also spending on marketing. you know that your stock took a little bit of a hit in the latest earnings because of the concerns about spending on marketing. what specifically are you spending on? -- >> i do not think

that is the reason, by the way. one of the things we talked about is that parts of the world are a little softer economically than perhaps they thought they would be, western europe, in particular. and western europe is, by far, our biggest area. regarding brand advertising, we know how important it is to make sure that we are well known everywhere. when you go to the u.s. and you ask somebody where can i get a home or an apartment, they may not think of booking.com first. that's something we need to correct that. -- that's something we need to correct. if you go to europe and the think i need an apartment, they think booking.com. we need brand advertisers so that people understand we have a great product, a better product, i think. first of all, when you use our home product, it is instantly confirmable right away. you are not going back and forth with some host to decide you can't or can't get it. with us, right away, you get it. on top of that, we don't hit you with a traveler's fee. you go through all that aggregation and you get hit with a traveler's fee? to me, that's absurd. we don't charge them that. and we also have 24/7 customer service.

if something breaks, we will fix it for you. jason: 30 seconds to go, how is the traveler feeling right now globally? nervous, confident? how would you describe it? glenn: depends on what part of the world. there are some issues not only in the economy, but let's face it, brexit causes uncertainty. when you are thinking about going somewhere in europe, your -- you are english, and you're thinking what might happen to me, they may wait to book until they see what happens next week and the week after that. in france, there is political uncertainty. who knows? in the long run, people like to travel. carol: in the business section this week, you might robert that -- you might remember that last year the supreme court overturned a federal law confining legal sports betting to nevada. jason: that means march madness betting is actually legal this year. carol: our reporter tells us what this means for this gambling startup, the action network. >> the supreme court ruling that made it possible for states to legalize sports betting came down last may, and you can see it coming when the court agreed to hear the case.

around that time, chairman hernen group, a private equity investment group rolled together some smaller companies that were already serving daily fantasy players and people already betting in the gray and black markets and started the action network. the idea was not to be a betting operator, but as they put it, the bloomberg of betting where they are giving you all the data and tools you need to be a smart better. carol: thank you very much for the compiment. we see a lot of data and data analytics used for players and strategies, tell us about their strategies. tell us about action network? there are a couple of in their -- there are couple of tiers and they are hoping to bring in people. >> it starts with a media company with a are writing the stories. here is the line for the game, here's where the smart money is going. here is a smart thing that happened and a better won a huge payout. that is to get you in and

familiar to download the app, and that they have a series of paid services that get more and more sophisticated. so you can get basic data about where the money is, a given that, and some expert picks for $8 a month. for $50 a month, you can look to become a system better, where you filter through decades of nfl teamsay, underperform when it is windy against the spread or the home team after a bye week and does better, and you can actually test your theories out see if they do in fact to bear out historically, and then he can find ways to bet that system. that's $50 a month. for $250 a month, you can look at really granular data about how betting markets are moving all over the world. so they are trying to basically anybodyne-stop shop for from the casual to the really serious better who wants to read about it or maybe bet for a living. jason: and we mentioned cheered jason: there are a couple

of well-known names recruited into this, not least of this is a familiar name to lots of folks. he covers the business of sports, 2 million twitter followers. widely followed, clearly. what is his role in all of this? ira: basically, they are trying to gain awareness of the brand and bring people in and he is the top of that funnel. so they hired people who have big followings, he is probably the biggest among them in the world of sports and sports betting and sports business to basically sort of grab those 2 million followers and say here arehe action network, here stories we're doing, and hey you might want to buy this h dollar -- this eight dollar service. he is there to report every little thing he sees and keep the name in the news. and then they will just keep building out to more states. right now, there are about eight states with legal betting, but they're hoping that these dozens more that are looking at it will come on board. jason: for the fifth year, bloomberg, we are putting together a special march madness contest. carol: we call it brackets for a

cause. jason: big names, hedge fund titans and former ceos and many more, they pick a charity and pledge a donation. carol: and the winner's charity is the real winner. jason: that is where the money ends up. we will keep you up-to-date with who is leading the rock ecology -- bracketology. carol: topping the charts in the world's hottest music market. jason: and some are betting that runners like me cannot resist more data. carol: and really, really, the only way to backseat drive if you are -- let's just call it uber-wealthy. jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

carol: welcome back, everyone, to "bloomberg businessweek." i' and i'm jason kelly. you can listen to us on the radio in new york, boston, washington, d.c. carol: in the bay a london, and of course, on the

bloomberg business app. in the features section, how to become a pop-star in china. jason: lucas shaw profiles ,anish star christopher nissen lucas writing about how he has conquered china. lucas: he is a popstar from denmark, grew up in a suburb of copenhagen and had this rapid ascent in his home country. you know, got signed when he was 17, walked into a record label and started performing. they liked him so much they gave him a deal. his second album won pop album of the year at the danish music awards. he had all of these number one songs, and at that moment, he was convinced that he was kind of on his way to becoming one of the biggest pop stars in the world, or at the very least he hoped that was what would happen. but when he tried to test the waters outside of denmark, he went to germany, norway, he did not have much success.

nothing happened. but around the same time, he found out that one of his songs had started to really make it big in china. and he started to go there in 2014, and since 2014, though to your point, he is pretty much unknown in the u.s., u.k., germany, japan, the world's biggest music markets, he has had eight number one songs in china. carol: what is it about the chinese market that makes him so appealing that he is not necessarily translating to other parts of the world? lucas: so part of it is that china still loves really traditional pop music in a way that most of the markets in the west have moved away from. a lot of pop that is successful now, you fold in some hip-hop, some dance music. you combine some of these other genres that have taken over the culture of the past 10 years. but a lot of the biggest musicians, not just in china, but across asia, are mando-pop stars, k-pop, j-pop, traditional pop.

that is one advantage for him. another thing, china is just such an unproven market at this point. everybody, unless you are taylor swift, adele, or bruno mars, you are starting from square one, and christopher just chose to put in the effort in a way few artists do because it's hard to make money out of the gate. carol: let's talk about in general, the music industry in china is very restricted. foreign artists have to get a visa to actually perform there. there are tight controls on all of it. jason: and many have been banned. carol: yeah. lucas: yeah, there are a very long list of top acts not allowed to perform there. katy perryjork, justin bieber. , there are many reasons, some have voiced independence movements into that, and if you wish the dalai lama happy birthday, you will probably not be able to perform in china. justin bieber was ambiguous bad behavior, but talking to some of the big music promoters in

china, the restrictions on what you need to do to play their is -- to play there is pretty severe. it comes down to not just submitting everything he will say, because there is no spontaneity in musical performance in china, which is weird when you think about the whole point of live music is to or maybeor -- ad lib play a guitar solo or saying something a cappella. but you have to submit a video of everybody who will be on stage. i have had promoters tell me they have to submit a video of the security guard standing there for five minutes, because the chinese regulators want to know every facet of a performance because they see the potential power of music. and you have seen restrictions on what you can or can't say in china get a lot worse over the last 5-8 years. carol: time for the pursuit section. jason, you have a story in this section about this shoemaker. jason: many people have not heard of it. what is so interesting about this shoemaker is they have a

partnership with fleet feet. many people have heard of fleet feet, it has been around since 1976. hundreds of locations around the country. what they do is have machines inside the stores that measure your feet. they put all the data together, hundreds of thousands of scans they started with, to create a new shoe. carol: a shoe with all of that data. the magazine has focused on what data is doing for farms and other industries this week, it is doing it for this industry. jason: let me tell you, runners are assessed with tracking -- are obsessed with tracking everything. it seems like putting on a pair of shoes, so simple, but it is so much more complicated area and data can only make it better. carol: this guy has so many running shoes under his desk. also in pursuits, what it is like to be driven around in a rolls-royce santa. we got to brave the back seats of the most luxurious cars on the planet. >> imagine private jet travel on four wheels. that is what these automakers

are going for and that is kind of what you find. carol: you tested all of these, and it is so much fun to read through. the rolls-royce phantom. extended wheelbase. that's important, because it gives you more room? >> nine more inches over the regular phantom, which is already a massive car. so this adds another nine inches, which, of course, makes room for things like champagne foot restsssagers covered in lambswool. you can put in cases to store your watches, cigar humidors, lots of fun things like that. carol: you said it is two thrones? >> yeah. two separate seats that recline pretty much fully that have monogrammed pillows, all leather, over 10 inch touchscreens for each one. bluetooth headsets, the whole thing. you're watching billions and i am watching outlander. jason: this is a $525,000 car.

>> base price. and when i asked rolls-royce, they said over 90% of the phantoms they sell are heavily bespoked, which means this $525,000 number is a suggestion. most cost more than that. carol: what is extra on something like this? >> extra is like getting the trim on the seats to match your favorite pair of shoes or your favorite color of lipstick. or to get a special safe you can keep your diamonds in that fits exactly your specific diamond jewelry that you have. jason: let's go a little bit downmarket to the lexus. [laughter] >> sure, yes. jason: it does not have all of the bells and whistles, but you point out that the appointments and the leather are pretty amazing. >> it is probably the least expensive car on this list, but for the price, you get a lot. i wanted to call that out, there are a wide variety of price ranges. the lexus is very well thought

out. so while it does not have the champagne coolers and the that the and the wood phantom does, it is very well thought out. a good use of space. the seats also tilt back to a 48 degree angle, which is great. everything is just really well thought out and it is big. so for the money, a great backseat. carol: you call it a 70 mile per hour hotel room. >> yeah! yes, exactly. and the whole thing about these is you can use them to work, to sleep, it is an extension of your day. jason: and also, here in new york city, we are very familiar with the whole fleet of black cars even with the age of uber t, there are a lot of black cars moving around. the lincoln continental, well known to many of our listeners and viewers, they have upgraded that as well. >> they have, this is a continental reserve, the car that is keeping lincoln in business. it is kind of an institution. it is just like rolling through town in a big black safe.

the doors are really heavy, it is silent on the inside. again, you have the nice tactile finishes, the woods of the interior, everything is an electronic. you have seat controls in the back that control every motion, the massaging. carol: "bloomberg businessweek" is available on newsstands now. jason: and online at businessweek.com and our mobile app. what is your must read? carol: what we just heard from hannah elliott, riding in the backseat of those cool cars. i love the details. jason: i also love the details, she really took us there. she has one of the best jobs at bloomberg. i have to say, elon musk. the reporting on that story. sean fox has got me every time, and the team up with matt robinson to understand the fec, the enforcement mechanisms in place against elon musk, fascinating. carol: this is a guy and a company where we always hear unusual stories, but this is on a whole other level. you can find more stories on businessweek.com over the

weekend, so check that out. jason: and check out our daily businessweek podcast. download or subscribe at itunes, soundcloud, and bloomberg.com. carol: more bloomberg television starts now. ♪

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>> they said, you are now in charge of greece. i propose the job to everyone and no one wanted to take it. >> can you tell the difference in the brands? >> not from far away. >> you take a four-week vacation. is that necessary? >> the most important thing is to love what you do.