brussels in response to russia's war on ukraine. the president and his administration have sought to reassure nato allies on the alliance's eastern front that they have u.s. backing. that comes as russia and ukraine continue negotiations into achieving a cease-fire. the kremlin says russian president vladimir putin european council's president that ukraine "is not showing a serious attitude towards finding mutually acceptable solutions." ukraine's parliament has voted to prolong martial law by 30 days, and the capital is set for a tonight curfew starting this evening. the prime ministers of poland, czech republic, pennsylvania say they will visit kyiv with talks with volodymyr zelensky. and natives says he is concerned russia might be trying to create a pretext to used chemical weapons in ukraine. >> they are making absurd claims

about biological and chemical weapons in ukraine. this is just another lie. and we are concerned that moscow could stage a false flag operation, possibly including chemical weapons. mark: the secretary-general says any use of chemical weapons by russia would be a violation of international law. and he refused to say whether it would be a redline that might draw a military response from nato. global news, 24 hours a day on air and on bloomberg quicktake, powered by more than 2,700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. i'm mark crumpton. this is bloomberg. ♪

matt: i matt miller. here are the top stories we're following for you around the world. stocks open higher as the oil selloff sends prices lighting below $95 a barrel, right now $96.60. what impact will that have on the automotive market? will get the details straight from the source. speak to the ceo of mercedes-benz about that company's plans to take on tesla. plus, a market continuing to expand as buyers spend big with the model. what does it mean for the future of consumer spending? they do have to pay later. we will speak to the chairman, ceo, and founder of a firm holdings to get the details. jon? jon: matt summed it up nicely at the start.

the fact he saw that pullback in oil did bring investors back into the equity markets. there's a live look at what's happening with the nasdaq, looking at a healthy advance as investors came into some of those stocks that have taken a hit as a result of the generally higher price of oil. the canadian market is quite influenced by that energy trades. the fact oil prices are down means weakness for the tsx. let's look at the move for the price and for crude, you heard those comments, matt, from mark crumpton earlier about what vladimir putin was a of characterizing where we are in the process right now. and that uncertainty did seem to bring oil off its lows. but generally based on some of the big questions about the economic story in china, we came into this day was some questions about whether oil could hold those higher levels. the volatility, we just have to emphasize how unprecedented it can feel on some days. and case in point, the bloomberg news team just broke some news about the major commodities

player, which is looking for some new funding sources. they've been talking to private equity firms about the possibility of getting some additional financing, conversations with blackstone, among others, because at this stage in the game with the volatility we're seeing an increase in talk and margin calls, i would imagine anyone in that business wants to be at the ready to have the right funding sources in place. matt? matt: absolutely. so we'll continue to pay attention to those markets, but i want to get to the breaking news story that we had this hour, the white house announcing president biden is going to travel to brussels next week to meet with nato allies as russia presses on with its invasion of ukraine. let's bring in bloomberg washington correspondent annmarie hordern to talk about exactly what we know. there are a couple of conferences in europe, a council summit and a nato summit. is he going to be attending both in europe? annmarie: it sounds like he will

be attending anything that has to do in ukraine happening in brussels, kicking off with that extraordinary nato meeting that you insulted bert just announced for all nato members and heads of state. that takes place next thursday, march 24. that's when the president will be in brussels, jen psaki coming out on the white house podium announcing this. also, she was asked about what other potential trysts can the president have on this trip. she was asked about poland. she was also asked about whether the president will meet with zelensky. and she basically said they are still finalizing the trip. it doesn't seem like anything is off the table. jon: and as we sort of think about the strategy and what people will be talking about, what ultimately do you think are going to be some of the key questions we start to hear a little bit more detail on what the trip entails? annmarie: i think the trip, at the moment, is largely also

symbolic in the sense that the united states wants to make sure they are going physically to the nato hq in brussels and showing a very much united force, alongside nato allies, against president vladimir putin. we should remember this is something putin does not like to see. he loves a divided west. seeing the president take this trip is meaningful. it comes after a weekend where there was shelling and missiles very close to a nato member, poland, their border with ukraine. as a military facility, and u.s. forces were using with ukrainians. this comes at a very interesting time after that attack. but also, there's a lot of talk and concern -- we seen this a number of times, publicly from officials -- about questioning whether president vladimir putin would use chemical or biological weapons in ukraine, which jake sullivan said that would mean severe consequences for president putin. matt: what kind of consequences?

does that mean the u.s. would then get into this conflict and we would have a direct or maybe indirect war between u.s. and russia? annmarie:, at this moment the president has set a number of times -- and that does not seem to be something he has wavered on -- that there will not be u.s. troops on the ground in ukraine. there's been lots of questions about whether or not nato forces would set up a no-fly zone. again, the answer from officials is like no, that's not happening. if you get nato involved, that potentially is more of in impetus for russian soldiers to actually want to fight against an america or nato force. so at the moment, it's a very good question. what is left to sanction or potentially punish the kremlin, given the fact that there has been an onslaught of financial and economic sanctions that we see are hurting the russian economy? jon: annmarie, a helpful breakdown on this breaking news, much appreciated. we'll keep track of that story

but we do want to get back to the markets and bring in deborah cunningham, chief investment officer for money markets at federated hermes, a firm that has $659 billion in assets. never a dull moment these days. i wonder how you been approaching the volatility these days. deborah: there is volatility on both ends of the equation. you've got the treasury market being volatile from a standpoint of quality and spreads going low and interest rates remaining low despite the fact that is going to raise rates tomorrow. and then credit products, there really have no credit or liquidity strains, nonetheless are reacting to the volatility that's happening because of supply shortages, inflation, spreads going out. so our reaction at this point is to shorten weighted average

maturities to increase our securities and wait it out to get a little bit more guidance from the post meeting tomorrow with chair powell after the first move of what we think is confirmed at 25 basis points in the marketplace. matt: i want to quickly ask you about the new story we got earlier from dow jones saying saudi arabia's speaking to the chinese about selling oil in u.n. this could be, at least in terms of what it represents, a shift away from the dollar as world reserve currency. what does it mean to you? deborah: well, as the dollar becomes less valuable to some degree, despite the fact that our interest rates are moving upward, maybe that has a little bit of a positive implication

from an inflation perspective. really, though, when i look at just what it means from a shortage standpoint here in the u.s., we're not really experiencing that at this point. we don't have much of a dependency on oil from russia and other types of fossil fuels from russia or ukraine. nonetheless, it's a global world so i think that's a positive development. jon: and given everything you're saying, deborah, and i want to come back to the story of central bank thinking. we were looking at a survey of fund managers where there is a healthy dialogue right now on at what point, when you're seeing the selling pressure, do you start talking about a fed put. certainly, the s&p 500 is nowhere near what that group is thinking about. it would have to decline another 10% plus. but in a week where we are trying to figure out the roadmap

ahead from interest rates to be having, on the one hand, a conversation around that, and subsequently wanting some guidance from central bankers on what kind of downside protection there will be, you know, in your career, what kind of moment does this feel like to you? deborah: well, it's certainly more of a tight rope than i've seen the fed walk in previous cycles. and to some degree, we were there in a small, just a small example of it, in the 2018 timeframe, when the fed reversed from its normalizing mode it was in and started lowering rates again. this has a different feel to it and a lot of factors to be considered. certainly, we look for guidance from the chair tomorrow as to what to expect from a supply standpoint with what they're going to do with the balance sheet, from a future movement look at interest rates

expectations in the futures market. they're building in seven or eight basis point increases by the fed over the next 12 months. i'm not sure if that's realistic or not but i'm hoping we get some guidance on that tomorrow. they're definitely trying not to veer to far left or right in their path. matt: absolutely, that's what we see on the wirp function on the bloomberg terminal. deborah cunningham, great to get your insight. hope we can get you back on again, global liquidity markets cio at federated hermes, deborah cunningham. time now for our stock of the hour. it is mercedes-benz ag. the stock is higher as the company announced it will open a battery facility in alabama this week. and i got a chance to catch up with the ceo of mercedes, ola, about the plant and about how the company is handling a surge in global inflation. take a listen. ola: you pay a little bit more,

but you get more. pricing is strong, but the product substance is unbelievable. so yes, we have had strong pricing in the market over the last 12 to 18 months. matt: how about your supply chain right now? obviously the geopolitical situation, russia's war in ukraine, has thrown a wrench in the works for a lot of automobile producers. is that a short-term hit that you're able to work around? or are there problems with ukrainian deliveries that you need? ola: over the last couple of years, we have been thrown a few curveballs with covid, the semiconductor shortages, and now the war in ukraine. where is we don't have direct operations in ukraine for mercedes, we have several suppliers that work out of ukraine. and we're now working with them to minimize any impact we have on our production schedule. we have very, very flexible productions. we're kind of working around it

in a day-to-day mode, making sure the impact on us is as small as possible. matt: i wonder about your easy quest. and we've seen a lot of other carmakers choose various strategies to try and help, really laser focus on ev's, ramp up their production, raise funding. you split your mercedes and daimler trucks division. is there anything else you're looking at to try to beef up your ev production? ola: we're very, very focused on mercedes brands product, which is tech meets luxury. and that means a zero emissions. we're fully committed to electric. all new trucks for mercedes will be ev only from 2025 forward. we are converting our plants.

we're building new battery plants. we announced today we're going to put a cell plan into the united states. so in europe, and north america, in asia and china, we're on a very fast track to turn over a whole industrial footprint towards ev and, if possible, get to an all ev sales, more market conditions already allowed by the end of this decade. matt: in terms of funding, volkswagen finally selling porsche to try to unlock that value. do you think you can unlock some value with your amg unit in the same way? ola: amg is the performance dimension of mercedes. it's so fully integrated into the overall organization, so i can't see us taking that outside the company. but this symbiosis between everything that mercedes d oes for that performance gives

us a growth opportunity. so there's more to come from amg, also especially in the ev space, so just watch this space develop. matt: definitely watching it, ola. let me finally ask you about the chip shortage. you mentioned it. how close are we to an end in terms of the chip shortage? how close are we to a smoother running production with microchips? ola: we can see all manufacturers upping their investment. that will bear fruit. i predict that in 2022, constraints in the semiconductor side will still be there and i'm hopeful that the second half of this year, that we will see a little bit better supply situation. but we're working with our partners to improve this and take another step to something that looks like normalcy, hopefully, in 2023. jon: some good perspective there from the ceo of mercedes-benz, a conversation with matt.

we're going to take a quick break. women come back, we're going to continue the ceo conversations. he's in silicon valley building the business of a firm and talking about the future of finance and the by now, pay later business model. we'll have the details next. this is bloomberg. ♪

jon: this is bloomberg markets. i'm jon erlichman with matt miller. and bloomberg news reported the by now, pay later lender affirmed asset-backed bond sale, a major investor in the top or a portion of the deal said to have backed out at the last minute due to general market volatility. here to take us through that story is the firm's founder and ceo, max lipton alongside bloomberg's, emily chang. emily: thank you so much for joining us.

we're going to talk about that bond sale. but i have to start with you on this escalating war in the ukraine, which has now become a communitarian crisis, people trapped in the country without food, water, and electricity. you've been pretty open about fleeing ukraine as a child.. and i have to know, how are you watching this? how is this impacting you? do you have family, colleagues there, given that they're such a huge tech ecosystem? max: it's terrible, i think is the shortest answer i have. i have people there. i have relatives, friends, classmates, colleagues, and it's horrible what's going on there. and i think the human cost, it's now of crisis proportions. don't have to be born in kyiv or trained in ukraine to understand how awful it is, but certainly does not help to recognize the

streets in some of the footage. i've been very focused on trying to channel all of our family charitable contributions to refugee helping charities on the polish border. i think that's probably the most concentrated thing one can do now, financially, to offset some of the damage. emily: now it's also having a macroeconomic cost as we're seeing -- jon mentioned of firm halting asset-backed securities, a big investor pulling out. it seems like this was going to go through. why did the investor pull out? max: so that's actually probably pretty important to set the record straight. i'll cover this very carefully. first of all, we've known each other a long time. i'm an engineer and think like an engineer. we build the entirety of the firm, this concept of full redundancy and resiliency. so our service have tons of redundancy. our funding for our loans --

since we're not a bank, we have to fund loans from the outside. we have warehouse lines, where we basically place these loans into a warehouse arrangement. then we sell those loans. the deal that we were contemplating executing last friday was a refinancing existing asset-backed securities. one of the investors felt that the market volatility, overall, just made them decide to pause a purchase of bonds. and the deal had a real opportunity of becoming, economically, less financially attractive to us than our other funding sources, so we very quickly pivoted to place the same assets to events better economic arrangement -- to a much better economic arrangement. this was entirely an economic choice in our part. part of what we said yesterday to sort of highlight the point

of, this isn't just a choice to make simply because we wanted to do for funding. our profitability guide was raised specifically to make the point that even as we shift between different funding sources, we're not going to see any deterioration of margin. we expect to pivot. emily: right. so will you launch that deal again? and if so, when, especially in terms of market volatility we were talking about? jon: we're certainly always looking to expand our funding sources. this is not our first deal and certainly not our last deal. and as we watched the securities market, we'll certainly come back to it with other products. i've literally spoken with a handful of avs investors last when he for hours and asked them, how do you feel? just try to get market color. and the answer is you guys are the quality and the market is evidently very volatile, but we stick with you guys. we launched the next deal when the time is right, but we have a

lot of choices in the matter and we want to choose the best. matt: is this kind of myth -- misunderstanding part of the reason for the drop in your stock? i'm looking at a chart that goes over 168 in q4 last year and is now 27. max: you know, i think if i knew had to predict the markets, i probably would have a different job. but i know how to run tech companies and that's what i intend to do. i think in the immortal words of bill walsh, the markets take care of themselves. we've really done just an amazing job. if you look at the snapshot of where we are today, we're in the best position we've ever been. we have funding capacity confirmed and committed to fund another $20 billion of growth, profitability improved even relative to revenue growth, 70% last quarter. we've been really an exceptional shape.

market volatility is scary out there. there's a war in europe that i certainly hope to god does not expand its footprint. there's a lot of other reasons to be scared. i think investors are acting irrationally. afm holders are doing the right thing, but i intend to deliver on our shareholder value, and our team is committed to shareholder value, and eventually the stock price will eventually catch up. jon: we're almost out of time, but hearing what you're saying, and i heard you counter the narrative that you have to choose between growth and profitability, basically. max: that's exactly right. we can dish intend to grow. we want to grow. -- intend to grow. we want to grow. we absolutely will grow profitability, as well. matt: max, great to have you on the program. thank you for joining us. affirms ceo, as well as bloomberg's emily chang, always great to see you.

we are looking right now at markets, at one point, were up -- they are at 1.5%, so i guess we're still at market has right now, this as the price of oil comes down. you take a look at crude oil, ti trading at $96.44, brent crude just over $100. jon, to some extent, investors are showing a little risk on relief today. jon: absolutely as we get ready for an important day with the fed tomorrow, so a lot to consider here, matt, and that volatility expected to continue whether talking commodities or other stocks. matt: volatility definitely something we can count on. max count on it, as well. for jon erlichman, i'm matt miller. this is bloomberg. ♪

mark: now keep you up-to-date with news around the world,

here's the first word by mark crumpton. the white house as president biden will meet with nato and european union leaders in brussels next week in response to russia's war on ukraine. mr. biden and his administration have sought to reassure nato allies on the alliance's eastern front that they have u.s. backing. russia has introduced sanctions against president biden, secretary of state antony blinken and other top american officials. they are tit-for-tat measures according to the foreign ministry. the sanctions would block assets to russia and freeze sanctions there. and russia's economy is facing potential default that could cost the country billions and shut the country out of most funding markets. moscow says all debt will be serviced, but in rubles since more sanctions don't allow dollar settlements. failure to pay or paying in local currency could lead to a potential wave of default on about $150 billion of foreign currency