colonial history of the continent. ah, we do speak a lot on revisionist history, which is something that i think has really affected a lot of communities worldwide. a lot of communities have not known the back on the his chair room where last last year's tragedy is heading to south africa. the next round in the battle for a ticket to germany. oh, thanks for watching. ah. oh, time for a brain update. because this orchestra called the brain continuously adapts itself. and so we ask a few astute questions. are we smarter swarms or you a,

psycho cra wouldn't causes monster waves. how powerful or your thought? we can control our thoughts, which makes us very powerful. questions about life, the universe and the rest that were series. 40 to the answers almost everything this week on p w. ah, high value products, high value company, search in luxury spending, as, as elvia mates to become yours. first half trillion dollar firm will ask why people are spending big despite a shaky global economy. the use debt di lemme finance ministers meeting in stock comb, been testing it out whether the block spending rows should be tightened and

a dangerous dependency, how moldova aims to end its reliance on electricity supplied by rushing back to separate this data we business on robots in berlin, welcome to the program. for the 1st time a european company has hit the half a trillion mark luxury group. elvia h reached a market capitalization over $500000000000.00 this week, the owner of brands including lou. if we talk to your and tiffany is writing a search in luxury spending, the sector is the major growth in the u. s. and among china's middle class, in particular, elvia mates has seen it share price increased tenfold over the past decade. let's just take a look at yours. most valuable companies are see, can see m h tops the tree by some distance in terms of market capitalization is actually just dipped below $500000000000.00 since crossing that threshold earlier in the week.

second is dennis pharmaceuticals, multi national nova nor disk. and then in 3rd is the world's largest cosmetics company, l'oreal so notably, no tech firms or energy firms and the top 3 in europe. and as i mentioned earlier, maybe has benefited from a booming luxury goods market. have a look at how that's growing over the past decade. it took a big hit during the pandemic, as you can see here, but is now surging once again, way past pre pandemic levels. we can now speak to ron bore, who is global head of consumer and retail research at h s b c. thank you very much for joining us on the program. so just tell us what is l v m h doing right? they're doing a lot of things, right. i think, i think clearly what we've seen over the past 3 years is an acceleration of market share gains, great visibility, very high margins. and what's happening now is you're seeing quite a few earnings upgrades coming through. i think fundamentally, we had underestimated the impacts of the reopening in europe,

even more so in the u. s. and now you have chinese consumers coming back and they're moving the needle quite significantly. that is, what is surprising though, is to see that luxury brands are doing so well. and we have so much about cost of living crises in various parts of the world and, and various financial strains on people. why is the luxury market, i mean, bounce back and then some, hasn't it since before the pandemic? how's that? how's that happening? well, i think it's a period of time probably as well when consumers need a bit of escape ism and to be fair. the consumers who are purchasing luxury have relatively high financial means and are not completely immune, but obviously more resilient when facing inflationary pressures. and when you've been stuck at home for so long, i think you know, you aspire to trouble, you aspire to, forgetting what we've just all been through. and there's absolutely no need to by luxury. but again, what she puts a smile interface,

luxury changes your perspective. luxury enables you to move to more positive psychological place, i guess. and of course, a lot of people saved quite a lot of money during the pandemic as well. we can remember that the people are savings when you read a lot of demand savings that you can tap into certainly. and then making the most of that, what you think it says about europe that it's l v m h that is it's most valuable company and not, you know, for example, a tech firm or, or the energy firm like what it would be the case in other parts of the world i just cover discretionary consumer company, so it's difficult for me to comment on the take, or other verticals or other sectors. but what i would like you might as well what i mean is i want to say about how your it's managed to market itself as a sort of luxury capital of the world. yeah. well, i think, you know, i think it goes to culture. you know,

i think it goes to the comment of down on the ceo of, of the image saying review to does not sell hand bags. we sell culture. and once that's the premise, then there's almost no limit to what you can. so ok. so what we've seen also is a form of di risking, i think the luxury market 25 years ago was, you know, relying on the japanese consumer pre drove it more of the chinese consumer. now it's about global wealth. and again, global culture. and so it's a much more balanced industry that it used to be in. it's partly de risk for from that point of view because you're relying on again global well to not one single national you moving, moving the needle for your, for your business. so does that mean we should expect to see the luxury market expanding even further because of the past 2 decades? you know it's, it's just been crying and growing. we've got a rebound now, but it's not something that's going to continue. yeah, i think there is a kind of confounding nature of growth. i think the u. s. market is broadly

speaking, still an emerging market for luxury. there's a lot of wealth, but you did not have the awareness, the culture, the appetite for those goods. and now you're aware, and you're willing, i think you have a lot of local client fells, who were ignored literally for decades. if you think about the local, french, italian spanish consumers. if you think about in asia, the local tie or singapore and consumers, they were left out because you didn't really need them. you know, you needed in italy to speak, japanese, korean, mandarin, russian, and english to, to go that. and then suddenly the world shot. and you started to pay attention to the local consumers in those local markets. and so i think that's the silver lining of cove. it's, you know, you finally did the work. you finally understood what locals were going after. you are not just relying on the hypothetical. come back of tourists. so yeah i, i, i, i am bullish for the long term in terms of the compounding nature of growth because

you still have so many people you can recruit within the permit of luxury and rumble from hsbc. thanks so much for bringing your insights on this. thanks for having me. now let's take a look at some of the other global business stories that are making the news. germany men narrowly dodged the recession in the 1st quarter of this year. the latest official data shows that g d, p remained flat from january to march, growth figures came in short of the site rebound that was expected. the energy crisis continues to weigh on. europe's biggest economy. a rail work is in germany could soon go on strike again with the trade union threatening to bring the country's rail service to a standstill for weeks. the union is demanding a raise of at least 12 percent for its members. will income in germany has been under pressure for 2 years with inflation high than waste growth? meanwhile, e u. member states are struggling to reach an agreement on the future of the blocks

of debt rules. finance ministers have been meeting in the swedish capital, stockholm some member states allowed that debt levels to surpass the committed levels during the pandemic. now, a rift is formed over how strict the rule should be. in future, the i m f is among those urging e countries to tighten their belts as the to we is bent. rigate can explain the inflation rate in the european union is way too high. one way to curb it is to lower public spending and public that that's a recommendation by the international monetary fund. and the european union is willing to hear the call. that's why finance ministers in stockholm are deliberating, a reform or that roots in the european union. the frugal states like germany insist that their pools have to be tough and lead countries to lower the dep in the end. but other countries heavily indebted like greece or italy insist on lose the rules

more flexibility. the fierce fight is going on behind closed doors. no, but it shouldn't take too long because markets don't appreciate fighting and instability them. indices are aiming to come up with a solution until the end of this year bantering. it's reporting from stock home, they're staying in europe. moldova wants to win itself off. energy supplies from moscow in terms of gas consumption. this has already been largely achieved. there, however, almost 80 percent of the country's electricity is still obtained from the russian backed break way region of trans nestea. and since the invasion of ukraine began, that's become an even bigger problem. it's often called the last stronghold of the soviet union. trans mystery is internationally recognized as part of moldova, the region broke away from all dove and government control 3 decades ago. with the

help of the russian army. now moscow backed oligarchs ru here was mystery. as main export is electricity going to the rest of moldova. it's produced in a gas fired power plant. russian state own gas company, gas prom supplies, trans mystery out with natural gas for free. the separatist power plant generates nearly all old overs power and that in turn finances the regime entrance nestea. they use this money for budget and for a for benches, for salaries. so for radius, for other social expenditures that in yester river flows along much of the dividing line electricity from trans nicea is sold at a high price on this side. the power bill for surrogate literacy brewery is around $3000.00 euros per month. that ends up in the pockets of the moscow back separatists with russia waging war against neighboring ukraine. he says,

this can't go on basically, or because of the conflict, of course, we are in a way, worry about the situation. ah, to be honest, as a business person, for me, it's important to get a cheaper electricity. this is what is important for me because i need to get to have my business going. mold overseas ending this dependency as a high priority. it wants to stop the money transfers to trans mistrial without these gas for free are their economy, their budget to their social are safe to not. nothing can actually be upkeep. upkept, sir gay literally is happy that the electricity is flowing, even though the price has almost tripled in a year. soon, he should be able to get his power from romania. new lines are planned to connect the 2 countries, electric grids, financed by western development banks. among others. then trans nestea will lose

a t source of income and become even more isolated. i'm just finally here on d to we have business. if i asked you to picture a robot security guard i regard, even, i reckon you perhaps conjure an image, something like the terminator or, or robo cop. but the reality it turns out is rather different. this little fellow is as center and has been put to work by a swiss security company uses cloud based artificial intelligence to navigate tough to rein, including snow, a center. it's already protecting sites, including the company's railway depot. it's designed to patrol the area, produce daily security reports, and also supports the company's human guard team. i think it's quite cute muscle for me in the business team here in berlin for more

head over to our website d to we have. com slash making the headlines and what's behind them. dw news africa, the show that was the issues in the continent. life is slowly getting back to normal. yeah. we're on the streets to give you enough reports on the inside of our correspondence with on the ground reporting from across the continent. all the trends doesn't matter to you next on d, w. o, probably when 71 with the sound of the built in guitar. when it comes to a v y, d 3 from china, thinks of it all to impress on the european market. is this on the right track?

read? oh yeah. mm mm. what people have to say matters to us. mm. mm. that's why we listen to their stories reporter every weekend on d. w with this is d w. he is africa coming up on the program. could the fighting in sudan? worse than the regents humanitarian challenges? tens of thousands flee across the board as many into chad and stout sudan, which all ready and other strain of conflict. we are just how they will cope. also, coming up kenya is shaken by mass.