tv Bloomberg Business Week Bloomberg October 12, 2019 3:00am-4:00am EDT
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♪ carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. jason: and i'm jason kelly. we are here inside bloomberg headquarters in new york. carol: this week, turkey launches a major offensive in syria, and president trump says the united states will not stand in the way. the surprise announcement heard around the world, and the not so
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surprising winner in all this. jason: plus, vaping. closer to home. how juul took on big tobacco and is caught in the middle of a huge public health crisis. o isl: and aramco's mega ip finally set to go. jason: first, here is joel webber on this week's issue and the cover story, tesla and the complicated ethics of autopilot. joel: that's right. we all like the idea of driverless cars. it seems like the future, right? but how do we get there? basically, tesla is in the middle of this grand experiment with autopilot, which is viewed as a steppingstone to driverless cars. but there is this big ethical dilemma. this cover story is an ethics course of how do we get there? tesla is already doing this in real time with autopilot, and other companies have been not quite as bold as what tesla has chosen to do. carol: joel, dilemma is right. the more miles we get on the road with something, the better. there is so much data involved in making this better.
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but in the interim, you're going to lose some lives. is thehat's right, that moral calculus that we are living in right now because that car is next to you, you are on the roads with them. there is no real oversight. think about drugs. there are clinical trials. there is no same safety mechanism in place for our transportation departments. so this is out there already in real-time. because of that, our estimate is it is past 1.5 billion miles. that tesla has been able to acquire. a lot, right? we don't know how safe it is, but we are all living in this world now. jason: there is a connection between this story and the story we have already mentioned around vaping and juul. these are two companies, juul and tesla, in very different markets, who are essentially taking a similar approach to, let's get there, let's get out there and figure it out. joel: move as fast as you can. sometimes you break things, sometimes it costs a few lives. the tesla question is, maybe
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autopilot is worth it, right? like, a couple people die, but could this dramatically saves millions of lives in the same way that penicillin once did? carol: what is the safety level? what is it people are willing to deal with in order to get to an autopilot world? joel: it is a story that has been hidden in plain sight for a while, and we did not see anybody wrestling with the ethical dilemma. that is what zach did so well, and that is why we made it the cover story. jason: it is somewhat of a lifestyle story. we picture a world where we are able to sit back, read a book, or maybe have a cup of coffee. that brings us to the debrief this week, on a lighter note. you sat down with andrea illy. he is a connoisseur and entrepreneur. joel: if you know anything about coffee, illy is one of those brands that means coffee. and quality. we talked to him at our good business festival in london we did a couple weeks ago.
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the thing i thought was profound, this is a third generation company. you think, coffee is a crowded market. think about all the different coffee companies. how did somebody like andrea illy distinguish his brand and think about future proofing it? because coffee is ultimately a commodity, and climate change is going to have profound impacts on that industry. sool: joel weber, thank you much. joel weber, editor of the magazine. turning to a top story this week, turkish troops crossing into northeastern syria to force u.s.-backed kurdish militants controlling the border area away from the region. jason: and president trump saying the u.s. will not stand in turkey's way. dozens of u.s. troops working with the kurds were pulled back earlier this week. carol: that's right, and that announcement took a lot of folks in washington and around the world by surprise as it impacts the united states relationship with other countries, none more so than russia. here is reporter henry meyer in moscow on advantage, putin. henry: russia has been looking
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to restore the influence it had in the middle east, which was strong during the soviet era. that changed dramatically after the collapse of the soviet union. and really, putin, president putin has had immense success in this field, in the intervention that russia did in syria starting a few years ago, in which they succeeded in reversing the outcome of the civil war. president assad was on the verge of being overthrown, and he is now firmly in power. this has been a great success. but what is happening now is that the u.s. withdrawal from syria is providing russia an opportunity to really cement that situation in syria. carol: but it is not just about syria. i think you are right that russia has since filled the vacuum from syria to libya, even
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luring turkey into buying military equipment. it is a broader impact for russia. henry: that's right. syria, if you like, has been russia's calling card in the middle east. it is the reason why it is taken seriously now. but it is using that to expand its role in many other countries. in libya, there are increasing reports that russia is backing the strongman in the east, general haftar, and it is developing relationships with traditional u.s. allies like saudi arabia. president putin is due to visit saudi arabia shortly. you mentioned turkey. that is very important. the decision by turkey to defy u.s. pressure and go ahead with buying the s-400 missile defense system. it could be a turning point, actually, for that country's relationship with the west and with russia. carol: what is interesting, and
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i find it in your story, and i think we are all getting up to speed. we know what has been going on in syria, but all the complicated relationships. but you do talk about someone who used to have a relationship in the trump administration, the former envoy for combating the islamic state, brett mcgurk. he tweeted out, "trump tonight after one call with a foreign leader provided a gift to russia, iran, and isis." this is somebody who worked within the trump administration being very critical of this move by the president. only one.is not the there is a substantial number of influential people who think this is a terrible mistake, and not only is it benefiting putin, but it is also benefiting iran and islamic state. jason: coming up, juul. is it the new big tobacco? it wanted customers off tobacco, now kids are getting hooked on
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♪ jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." carol: join us for bloomberg businessweek every day on the radio starting at 2:00 p.m. wall street time. you can also catch up on our daily show by listening to our podcast on apple podcast, soundcloud, and bloomberg.com. jason: and find us online at businessweek.com and through our mobile app. carol: turning now to teen vaping. this week, school district across the u.s. sued juul in federal courts. jason: and walgreens and kroger also announced they will stop selling e-cigarettes, making them the latest retailers to take action in the outbreak of vaping-related injuries. carol: and jason, those injuries have not been directly linked to juul, but the company is caught in the middle. here is this week's businessweek explainer on how juul took on big tobacco. juul hit the market with its fruit flavored nicotine in 2015.
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not long afterward, it was being called the iphone of e-cigarettes, the keurig of vaping. the company had a valuation of $38 billion, and cofounders, adam bowen and james monsees, were billionaires. they were not just interrupting any market, they were taking on big tobacco. it was a huge problem to solve. there are a billion smokers worldwide. and cigarettes still cause about half a million deaths in america every year. bowen said in 50 years no one would be smoking cigarettes. but now the question is, will they be using juul instead? the company has found itself in the midst of a huge public health controversy. juul is accused of hooking an entire new generation of high school students on nicotine. it is now the target of a criminal investigation, a congressional probe, and an fda inquiry. and in a touch of irony, the company that set out to take out -- take down the big tobacco companies has a new ceo, who came from the maker of marlboro cigarettes. juul is the subject of how the
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-- is the subject of the feature story, specifically how the e-cigarette maker is like so many silicon valley startups. jason: here is reporter lauren etter in l.a. lauren: like other silicon valley companies, this started at stanford university. the founders were graduate students studying at the business school, and they were smokers. were sharing smokes out back and decided, wow, this is an outmoded product. maybe we can innovate on that. they did a lot of research. they launched their very first version of an e-cigarette, at a time when there was not too much competition on the market. they basically innovated in the cigarette space and launched what became the most popular e-cigarette in the world. carol: but it was not so easy. first, the initial device did not work so well, and it was hard getting investor money, too, initially. lauren: it is interesting
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because at the time they were seeking money, circa 2005 to 2010 when they had the prototype, they wanted to start launching it, and they got the cold shoulder from silicon valley investors initially. the tobacco industry is considered to be one of the sin industries, and silicon valley shunned those sin industries. they originally had a very tough time getting some funding, but that all changed later down the road. jason: what changed it? part of it was positioning because they got people on board with this idea of no, no, no, this is actually an antidote in a way to what was already considered then a public health crisis. lauren: exactly. so, two things -- well, multiple things happened. but it was very clear that cigarettes were going to be a dying industry. fewer people every year were smoking. 3% decline year after year.
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people were starting to turn away from cigarettes. but of course, they are addicted. they are addicted to the nicotine. that is what the company founders zeroed in on. we can allow smokers to continue having a nicotine makes, but -- nicotine fix, but it will not cause the tar in the lungs and cause lung cancer. they positioned it as a more healthful products, a healthful alternative to cigarettes. that started catching on. but the second thing was it is a very addictive product. they invented something called a nicotine salt, vape liquid. basically, they had chemists early in their laboratories, and they devised this ultra-powerful nicotine liquid. that for sure helped get a lot of people hooked onto the product. carol: i think what is so troubling is how did so many teenagers, right, those underaged, get hooked on a product like juul? lauren: this is the thorniest
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issue regarding juul. but the fact of the matter is early on, juul laid out a marketing campaign that was pretty much designed to attract kids. hadas super edgy, it colorful graphics, really bold. they hired models. they made it look like a very cool product. they marketed it on instagram. and sure enough, much to nobody's surprise, high school students and middle school students eventually started trying the product. and the combination of the marketing and the highly addictive nature of the product really allowed this product, or facilitated the spread of this product, across america and high schools and middle schools. so, now you have millions of people addicted to it. carol: be sure to check out the magazine. we have another e-cigarette story about a top scientist at to china, and aims to have ang
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billion smokers kick cigarettes with her new endeavor. jason: a campaign has given money in support of the band of flavored e-cigarettes. carol: the world's most valuable company is set to ipo, but is aramco worth the hype? jason: another unintended consequence -- consequence of the trade war, a lost generation of trade workers. ♪
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♪ jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." carol: you can also listen to us on the radio on siriux xm, channel 119. and on a.m. 1130 in new york, 106.1 in boston, 99.1 f.m. in washington, d.c. jason: a.m. 960 in the bay area. in london on dab digital, and through the bloomberg business app. let's turn to the business section. aramco's mega ipo, we have been talking about this.
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after several false starts, the public offering of saudi arabia's crown jewel, this is the company that pumps 10% of global crude oil supplies from fields under the desert. that ipo is finally going ahead. carol: the board is expected to give the green light for the world's biggest ipo next week. but will it live up to the hype? will kennedy is joining us from london. will: this was first suggested by the crown prince of saudi arabia in 2016. they announced it by saying this company, saudi aramco, which had been part of the saudi state for decades, it was going to do an it to global scrutiny and open up its finances. then it went away for a while. they had been talking about a listing in london or new york, but investors balked at the valuation the crown prince had put on the company of $2 trillion.
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all of a sudden, it has come back, but it came back in a different form. adhwill be listed in riy only. it seems they brought the backing of some of saudi arabia's richest families. at the moment, they think they can get that to trillion dollar valuation. carol: first of all, in terms of the listing, it is not like it is new york, it is not london, it is not hong kong. they are doing it on the saudi exchange.i do feel that even though it is going public, the saudi government will have a lot of oversight here. will: that is exactly right. on transparency are not quite the same as they would be in new york. i will give you one example of that. in new york, fcc regulations mean you have to be very precise in your oil reserves, how much is ready to drill now, how much we might be ready to drill in the near future, and how much is
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pretty speculative. but they would not have to do that listing in riyadh. they would be able to encourage saudi banks to lend to potential investors, both large and small. the saudi government has a history of when there is an ipo, they encourage intervention in the markets. it is not quite like an ipo would have been in new york or london. they will be marketing the toity outside riyadh international investors who want to come in through that mechanism. is not be there, but it the same as in new york. jason: when you go back and think about where the world was in 2016, what the world thought of saudi arabia. in therabia's place global economy and global political scene, that has changed pretty dramatically, not just for saudi arabia but
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specifically for aramco. anians targeted by some illrian made missile strik not too long ago. how has that changed the perception of this deal? will: this is a world-class oil company, and it is on par with exxon or shall. but it operates in a different operation. we see this in several ways, this attack from the drone strike. people are not sure what it was. it shows a vulnerability of the saudi energy system, and the fact that it is in the world's most dangerous neighborhood. that will presumably encourage investors to apply a discount. then you have the risk associated with saudi arabia. investors are going to have to take those things into account when they assess the ipo, for sure. jason: we move from a mega sized ipo to a medium-sized cloud company. carol: box is stuck in a sales
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rut. can it escape the curse of the silken valley mid-cap? box is a confounding company in some ways because it was founded about 14 years ago, and its founder, aaron levie, became a boy wonder here in silicon valley. he was called the future of enterprise technology, and there was so much promise for his company, which was a very well-regarded tool for transferring files. what happened is the company grew among the businesses. it decided to focus on business customers instead of consumers, like dropbox, eight slightly younger company. then it just by itself started to fall in terms of the growth rates. to meet the be able metrics it had expected. it would reduce the revenue
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forecast. it was deeply unprofitable. investors were concerned. thestors ultimately let market cap fall. place in an unfortunate of being unprofitable right now, but also having falling revenue growth. whichany of this size, has about 700 million dollars in revenue a year in the cloud business, many of them are growing above 20% or above 30% a quarter. and box is in the very low double digits. soap star board, an activist investor, disclosed a major stake, one of the largest holders of the company. now, aaron levie is facing one of the biggest challenges of his career. carol: this guy lives, sleeps, puts in a lot of effort. maybe the point is that is just not enough. maybe this is not what the company needs.
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maybe it needs someone else at the helm. nico: aaron levie told me he feels he needs to deliver. intoes not get too drawn the possibilities of what might happen, of him losing control. but of course, it is a possibility. exhibited before that when it is unhappy with a board or management, it does seek changes and removals. carol: we will stay in the technology section, because we have a story about a generation of chinese tech workers confronting a new reality. jason: while the broader economic slowdown and the trade war with u.s. may have led to the investor boom, it gave weights to have you -- gave birth to heavyweights like alibaba. here is rebecca penty. rebecca: there has been a boom in financing of these big tech companies which started as startups. that boom has ended, and that is because of slowing economic growth in china, the trade war with the u.s. that has targeted
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one of the chinese success stories, huawei. financing is drying up, and that means layoffs for workers. workers who put in years of their lives at these tech companies, they work in a culture, meaning they are expected to work 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. six days a week. that comes with the tacit agreement that they make a lot of money. they get promoted, they get rich, they get stuck in these companies. a lot of these people are getting laid off now and are really confronting this new reality that the tech boom is dried up. jason: rebecca, tell us about 9-9-6 because it is a clever way of describing what really was a way of life, and a way of life that was lauded by some of the best-known entrepreneurs in
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china. right.: rebecca that's earlier this year, a group of insertedrs, coders protesting against 996. their hopes and dreams were dashed. keep in mind, this is different from silicon valley. yes, people work very hard in the u.s., but it was an expectation you would work six days a week, 12 hours a day or more. they took to this site and protested against 996, started listing employers who were abusing them in terms of their workers not getting paid, that cetera. -- a etc. some of that old backl mentality biked
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♪ carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." jason: still ahead, andrea illy on leaving the global coffee empire started by his grandfather in italy. carol: plus champagne, fur, and caviar. snow polo chipsets to a frozen lake in switzerland. jason: but let's begin with our cover story. tesla aiming to dominate the global auto market by building the world's first self-driving car considers autopilot to be
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the crucial first step. carol: elon musk's decision to put autopilot in the hands of as many people as possible is what amounts to enormous experiment -- to an enormous experiment playing out on freeways all over the world. the question is, what is the acceptable bar when it comes to lives saved and lives lost? here is reporter zach mider. zach: a lot of companies are trying to build driverless cars, and the premise is, set aside the other good things that might come with driverless technology. it has the potential to save a ton of lives. something like 38,000 people die every year just in the united states. more than a million globally. and most of those fatalities are caused by human error of one kind or another. so, if you could remove -- somehow keep the cars but remove the human error, there is massive lifesaving potential. carol: that is the predicament, right? that in order to get to that point, unfortunately, we are going to see some accidents as people continue to test
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autopilots, correct? because they need the data to get better. zach: tesla is taking an approach that is totally different from everyone else in the autonomous industry. almost everyone else is basically saying, we have to be really careful about safety. we are going to try to build an autonomous car that works autonomously before we really start producing it in large quantities and selling it to people. and we have to sort of get it perfect, or almost perfect, before -- because otherwise, the concern is the public is going to react. they are going to freak out. they are going to ban these things. it could be a big problem. carol: and then there is tesla. zach: tesla is taking the opposite approach, which is saying, we don't have autonomous technology yet, but we have this stuff that is pretty good. you have to oversee it. sometimes it might make mistakes, but we will sell it, we will put it in the cars, and we will tell the customers you
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have to oversee this thing at all times. you have to constantly supervise it. it only works on highways, basically, but it works pretty well on highways. without touching a pedal or the steering wheel, you can drive for 100 miles. carol: you got in a car, correct? zach: that is right. jason: what was it like? carol: walk us through it. zach: it is creepy, you know? it is a creepy feeling. it is very different from cruise control because it is doing all the stuff without you. and you get to see what the car sees. you have a little video camera -- excuse me, a video screen that shows you, if you drive along and there is a bicyclist in front of you, it shows an icon of a bicyclist. it is recognizing someone on a bike or it is recognizing a truck or it is recognizing a car. it is making decisions about what these other objects are going to do, where the road is, and it is driving.
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jason: and so tesla's approach, just so we totally understand it, is this notion that they think you need a certain amount of data that can only really be captured in real life situations? what is their approach here? -- help meer understand it. zach: their approach is essentially, they think that to get to a fully driverless car, rather than keep it in the lab and perfect it, get it right, they are going to put something that needs human supervision into a car that they can sell for money and get hundreds of thousands of them on the roads. there is more than half a million of these cars out there today that you can use autopilot on. and the theory is, it is a little bit like the google search engine, which gets smarter every time you search on it because it sees how well it did in giving you the right search result. tesla claims they are doing a similar thing with their cars.
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they are actually collecting data from all these cars. and they think -- they claim that will allow their software to improve faster than the competition, because the competition, the other companies developing autonomous vehicles, are doing it mostly -- you know, they've got 100 test cars, 600 test cars there. tesla has got hundreds of thousands on the road. carol: one data point stood out for me. tesla customers have logged more than 1.5 billion miles on autopilot. they are often pushing the limits, even though tesla says you have to be aware, you have to be in control at all times. we know, we have seen the stories of people doing other things while driving their tesla. but at the same time, tesla takes that data and can refine the software and spit out upgrades to these cars. this is kind of a constant loop that is going on. jason: self learning. zach: that is the theory, right?
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but this is also a company that up until very recently -- carol: you sound skeptical. zach: i think we have to be skeptical of all these companies and try to kick the tires, as it were, about what they are claiming. and it may just be coincidence, but tesla until recently was telling everyone it was going to become super profitable by selling the -- by building the first mass-market electric car and selling those. it is building the first mass-market electric car, the model 3. but it is not profitable yet. so now, the focus is in this new direction. we are going to get to autonomy first. we need more time from investors. carol: what about its safety record? what do we know about that? if this is what everybody is concerned about and if tesla is saying, we know the way to do it, by throwing a ton of cars on the road, what is their safety record? zach: you would think that it would be relatively easy to tell
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because there are so many miles that they have already got under their belt, and tesla has such good data about what all these cars are doing. it is constantly talking to all these cars. but it is actually a mystery to outsiders exactly how dangerous this technology is. regulators have basically up until now not taken any action. they opened a defect investigation. it closed without ordering a recall or forcing tesla to make any changes. but it is actually quite hard to figure out how safe these cars are. and, you know, the kind of positive case is tesla says, look, humans are always supervising these cars. so you have all the safety of a human driver. it is just that the car is doing things to help you. almost like antilock brakes or something. it is just an additive safety
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feature. but the skeptical case says, when you take so much responsibility away from the driver, they get lulled into a sense of complacency and they get distracted. it is actually very difficult to pay attention to supervising a system that appears to be working perfectly well on its own. carol: we want to bring in 's kailey leinz. she has more on our cover story. jason: specifically, breaking out the number of teslas that are out there. autopilot is everywhere. kailey: it is everywhere. the vast majority of the teslas that have been delivered do have some kind of autopilot hardware. if you take a look, nearly 700,000 of those cars are on the road. only 49,000 of them do not have any autopilot software at all. that number has basically been level since the first version of autopilot was introduced back in 2015. you now have 100,000 that have the first version, and more than 520,000 that have version two plus. all cars have driven about 100
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-- about 1.5 billion miles on the road. the crash rate is low, but context matters a lot when we are talking about those accidents. carol: we are missing the full safety record. that is one of the points of zach's story. still ahead, andrea illy, chairman of the 86-year-old global coffee empire, we talk to him about tradition and innovation. jason: plus, the new skier's paradise. you are going to want to check this out. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪
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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 starting at 2:00 p.m. wall street time. you can catch up on our daily show by listening to our podcast on apple podcast, soundcloud, and at bloomberg.com. jason: and you can also find us online at businessweek.com, as well as through our mobile app. carol: we turn to a businessweek debrief. andrea illy is leading the
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s grandfather 86 years ago in italy. jason: what a history. well, he wants to double illycaffe's revenue in 10 years, but do it sustainably. he sat down with "bloomberg" editor joel weber in london. >> all business more or less starts with family. it depends on if you stay family or you go public. you typically go public one day, either because the family wants to withdraw or because you need to raise liquidity, or something went wrong in the company has been sold. so, i think that the family is good at managing the business. we can preserve control of the company forever, possibly. with 10e businesses different generations still being private. association,n one
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which you need to be a minimum two centuries old to be part of this family business. joel: so you still have work to do? >> exactly. so, i think it is feasible. joel: when you think about how you do business and how other businesses could learn from you, what metrics do you think good business should used to measure -- should use to measure performance? >> i said in a sense before, responsibility besides performance. and performance is about the value that you create. i was quite surprised this summer to see how this declaration has been received. the skepticism, and also i would say misinformation with that. -- with which it was received list a veryeemed to
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old fashioned argumentation about supporting the theory of shared value. if we can see the shareholder value, is about increasing -- first of all, value, not profits. this is a totally different story. value is the net. how much cash flow are you generating overtime? 10 years, 20 years? the net present value you are going to generate depends on the cash flow you are going to generate in this long period ahead. and the second variable involved is the cost of money. let's make this parallel with sustainability. if you are not sustainable in the business, then you will have reputational damage, which will make you sell less because consumers buy less from lower reputation businesses. if you are not sustainable, you are going to have higher costs.
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because you have liabilities, and then you have to pay liabilities. so, you are going to diminish your cash flow. if you have an unsustainable business, you are going to be more risky, so your cost of money is going to be higher. so, you have both in the denominator and numerator, and factors which are worsening your net present value. it is complete nonsense to talk about profits or shareholder value without considering sustainability as a main value creator. and this was not written in the price. and i was surprised because if you do a finance course, you learn it immediately. joel: illy has a grand tradition of innovation. what do you think the next big thing in coffee might be? >> well, in coffee? i really hope that we will be
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able to give a substantial contribution to virtuous agriculture. this is why i am starting it. and reaching the soil with organic carbon, thanks to that, making better coffee. more resilience to climate change. and showing the way to the rest of agriculture that this is feasible and with very good results. jason: next, the sport of kings. talking about polo, but with a twist, this time on ice. carol: it sounds like fun, i think. plus, no more michelin man. we try on scaled-back cover -- scaled-back cover coats. jason: we looked great. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪
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carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. jason: i'm jason kelly. you can also listen to us on the radio on siriux xm, channel 119. also a.m. 1130 in new york, 106.1 in boston, 99.1 f.m. in washington, d.c. carol: a.m. 960 in the bay area. in london on dab digital, and of course the bloomberg business app. we turn now to this week's pursuits sections, where it is about posh winter places and puffer coats. jason: we kick it off with playing polo on ice. chris: one of the best, most crazy events during the winter around the world is the annual snow polo in saint moritz. and it happens after davos, so a lot of people hop in their private jets and go there. it is sponsored by maserati and
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other luxury companies. it is a three-day weekend, it is a polo tournament. they clear off the ice and play polo all weekend. it is champagne and fur and parties and bling. the whole thing. carol: it sounds decadent. chris: it is really over the top. we cover luxury, and i had not heard of what they call a caviar bump, which is when they spoon caviar onto your fist for you to eat it that way. it is a thing. carol: it is like an upscale frat party. chris: you can get beers and orught worst -- bratwurst, have somebody put caviar onto your hand. jason: it is not just for the decadent. you can go for the regular. chris: it is one of those spots on the global ultrahigh net worth calendar, but what they are trying to do is make it assessable to anyone. if you are there, you are local, you live nearby, you can go for free, actually. although tickets in the grandstands can cost up to 700 swiss francs.
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but you can get a beer and watch this crazy sport of kings. jason: if you are not doing that, you are probably thinking of skiing. everybody is always looking for the next place. what is the new place? chris: there is this place that has been in development since about 2007. it is quite an old resort, but it kind of fell out of use by most people in the 1980's. it used to have a military base, then the military base closed. it became sleepy, and this egyptian billionaire actually looked at the place and was like, you know what? i could develop this. this has all the bones of an amazing resort. so he developed a hotel, the hotel jetty, he built a golf course. and he got a special dispensation to allow foreigners to buy second homes there, which you cannot really do in switzerland. basically over the past few years, it has become more and more of an international destination.
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and of course, it is a cute old swiss town, so it has all the charm you want. but it is actually kind of untouched. are replacing the old lifts with gondolas. jason: and it is big. chris: it is really big. they are actually connecting more mountains with gondolas and stuff so you can connect to other resorts, too. jason: it says the interconnected ski area, ultimately 180 kilometers, and 33 lifts. that is two more than vale. chris: don't tell vale. carol: and cool hotels and places to stay? chris: there is a small chain that is quite big and glamorous and new, but there are some old ones, like the hotel sonne, which have been around forever. even though the cheti is the new thing, all the hotels are pretty psyched because more people are coming. jason: we should point out, not all the locals are thrilled, it sounds like, because this was one of those throwback places,
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well hidden, secret gem for the locals who knew it, now it is all commercial. chris: that is the story of a lot of these ski resorts. like whistler, everyone is worried it is going corporate as . as they get bigger, it is good for the businesses, but it loses some of the character. carol: speaking of characters, the puffer coat getting a makeover. you just feel like the michelin man. jason: you think of people in new york city bouncing off of each other in the wintertime. but make it fancy. carol: but you guys have nice versions. chris: the question when it gets to winter in style that we get asked the most is, what is a cute puffer coat? which is kind of an oxymoron. carol: the room goes silent. chris: and one that doesn't look -- canada goose. they all look the same. they have that same look. so we went out and tried to find some other puffer coats that don't look the same and are trim
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and tailored. we found a few, and i brought some in case you guys want to try them. carol: we will try to describe them for radio. for those folks on radio, please go to bloomberg.com or buy the magazine. chris: one of my favorites is by this brand called perfect moment, and it is $490. it has got this herringbone read and blue and white pattern. carol: i am trying this on. it is like digital herringbone. jason: it is very short. chris: it is short. jason: that is because you have jeans on. chris: you wear the ski pants that zipped, that go up to the top. one of my favorite brands is called aztec mountain. this is the designer from a fancy fashion brand. carol: are these unisex? chris: the one you are wearing is for women, and jason's they have for men and women. carol: look at the little yoga hands.
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chris: the little elastics that cover your hands. carol: jason's is all blue, that is $750. mine is about $500. chris: like a puffer, but more hard-core. that is called the nuke suit. have one that is $800, and it is the blingiest. carol: are you going to put it on? chris is putting it over. [laughter] chris: it is definitely -- and it is so warm. carol: kind of like a solar panel. chris: this is in the range of a normal -- if you are wearing a nice winter coat, it will cost you about $700. carol: i feel like you are seeing more puffer coats, but they are stylish. chris: and brands like saying the wrong, -- like saint lauren
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are getting into this because they know people want something that looks nice. jason: and like you said, cut in a different way. this took us back to the previous season. carol: we saw the best jacket. we need to take a picture of this. the tuxedo jacket. jason: the beach blazer. chris: it is the winter version. the tailoring -- carol: they are laughing at us outside the studio. chris: when you go to a ski shop or whatever, everything you try on, you are kind of walking around like the michelin man. carol: but you do see a lot for women cropped jackets. they are still warm, but -- chris: you could not just wear your ski pants. wearing,hat jason is we know we have people who want technical coats, but a lot of
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people want something to walk around in. versusen are you skiing walking around in new york cold?e and are really jason: "bloomberg businessweek" is available on newsstands. carol: my must-read is juul. only because there is so much we don't know about the origins of juul, and this story lays it all out. jason: i am not going to have a must read because i have a must and gift to celebrate you your 20th anniversary at bloomberg. as bureau chief and your cohost, i hereby present you with your 20th anniversary block. jason: i was -- carol: i was wondering where my block was. i love bloomberg, mostly because of the people who are here. jason: check out our podcast. it is available at apple podcast, soundcloud, and bloomberg.com. carol: more bloomberg television
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