tv Nightly Business Report PBS September 15, 2014 6:30pm-7:01pm PDT
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this is "nightly business report" with tyler mathisen and susie gharib. >> is something brewing? potential big deals in the beer industry may have been rebuffed. but that doesn't mean the story is over. 19 and counting. the man running general motors' victim compensation fund says the number of ignition switch related deaths is higher than initial estimates and will go even higher. and breaking point? the author of a new report explains why the widening wealth gap is starting to take a toll on state government. we have all that and more tonight on "nightly business report" for monday, september 15th. good evening. everyone. tyler's on assignment tonight. big and bold, that was the buzzword on wall street today on a week that's expected to end with the biggest initial public
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stock offering in wall street history, chinese e-commerce giant, alibaba, there was a flurry of mergers and acquisitions today. the kind of monday frenzy that investors see as a sign of competence. a health care company is paying nearly $3 billion in cash for health care technology virm triveto. another health care company danaher is buying swiss dental implant make nobel biocare for $2 billion. microsoft is buying mojang. the company confirmed what we reported last week, it's paying $2.5 million for the popular game minecraft. and german auto parts maker ziaf is buying trw for nearly 12 million in cash. but the biggest deal of the day around a possible merger in the beer industry did not happen. s.a.b. miller was rejected in a
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takeover bid of heineken but only because it was reportedly defending itself against a rumored takeover attempt by anheuser-busch. that could be worth $120 billion. that was enough to send shares of major beermakers higher. molson/coors was the winner, anheuser-busch up 3%. more on the consolidation battle brewing in the beer industry. >> reporter: a frothy monday for the beer business. reports that anheuser-busch is moving forward on its long rumored bid for s.a.p. millers were debunked. and heineken said it rebuffed its own buyout bid. it does kick off a new wave of consolidation, something beer experts have been aenticipating for years. >> the global beer industry has been consolidating for about 15 years. you now have four global players that are half the beer business and they're 60% of the profit.
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now you're getting into the sort of final phase where it's the dance of the elephant wrs the giants have to merge with the giants. >> reporter: sab miller is the world's second largest breuer behind anheuser-busch which makes stella artois. so an sab/heineken merger would have created a company large enough to rival anheuser-busch, while an anheuser/sab would control one-third of the world's beer supply. >> sab's attempt to purchase heineken but was rebuffed by heineken is an opportunity for them to look at other areas of the world and to protect themselves from the global consolidation going on with abi now ready or getting close to looking for other additional acquisitions. >> each of the biggest breuers is looking to spur global growth. beer sales continue to slump.
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euro monitor forecast global beer consumption will increase 14% through 2017. fueled by growth in asia pacific, the middle east and africa and latin america. while western europe sees declines and north america remains flat despite a boom in craft brews. as the consolidation dance moves forward there's another name to keep an eye on, molson/coors. it could be a takeover target or a buyer if sab miller is forced to relinquish its stakes in the merger. >> what does one well known business leader think of all that dealmaking activity? james tisch, ceo of lowe's corporation tells me he's open to acquisitions but it hasn't been easy. >> it's been difficult to find businesses to buy. we work very carefully. we kick an awful lot of tires. we've come close on some.
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but just luck of the draw we haven't completed one yet. >> and we'll have more of my interview with tisch and his thoughts on everything from the federal reserve to the economy. that's coming up a little later in the program. meanwhile, on wall street today the major averages ended the day mixed as investors anticipate the start of the federal reserve's policy meeting on interest rates tomorrow. also, a disappointing economic report today impacted investor confidence. u.s. manufacturing output fell in august for the first time in seven months. by the closing bell the dow rose 44 points but the nasdaq tumbled almost 50 points getting stung by a big sell-off in momentum tech stocks like netflix, tesla and linkedin. growth forecasts are slashed even here in the u.s. this is the oecd cut its growth outlook for major developed economies for this year and next and called for more stimulus
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measures in the eurozone to stave off deflation. the group lowered its prediction to just over 2%. new and startling statistics about the number of people injured or killed because of defective vehicles made by general motors. today kenneth feinberg, the lawyer hired by gm to award payments to crash victims released his first report showing that claims and fatalities are much higher thap the automaker had determined. phil lebeau has more. >> after looking at hundreds of claims and meeting with families of those injured or killed in faulty gm vehicles, attorney ken feinberg is close to awarding millions of dollars to many of the victims. so far the fund has received 445 claim applications including 125 on behalf of those killed in gm models. of that, 31 have been deemed eligible for payments including 19 involving fatalities.
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>> clearly the number will go up. it's speculation as to how high it will go. but clearly, based on the number of claims that have already been found eligible and the number that are in the queue that we're looking at, the number will continue to rise. >> for months dpr s gm claimed 3 deaths were linked to accidents involving 2.6 million cars with defective ignition switches. even as lawyers and safety advocates have warned that there were far more people killed. >> gm simply was flat wrong when they tried to frame the conversation by saying there were 13 deaths. that's just factually impossible given the amount of years, you know, actually a decade that they covered up the fraud and the amount of accidents that we know occurred as a result of the ignition switch. >> general motors ceo mary barra is hoping that the fund will help her clear the cases of
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defective switches. >> since we've announced the protocol, i've not talked to him. he's running a completely independent process. that's the way we want it. >> ken feinberg expects the first claim payments to go out in the next 30 to 45 days with many payments being for several million dollars. when the gm compensation fund stops taking applications at the end of this year gm could wind up paying more than a half billion dollars to those injured or killed in defective gm cars. phil lebeau, nightly business report, washington. detroit's bankruptcy trials resume today after the city reached a settlement with a major creditor last week putting the case on hold since wednesday. so far the costs of the historic bankruptcy has reached $126 million and counting. already surpassing the amount paid by general motors and chrysler at their trials. advisers have totalled 28
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million and detroit's leading law firm has already billed the city $47 million. but many states are in a financial squeeze. according to a report released today from standard & poor's income inequality is taking a toll on state governments. the widening gap between what wealthy americans earned and people getting lower wages is reducing state revenues. joining us the author of that report. he's credit analyst at s&p ratings. nice to have you with us. a very interesting report. tell us why this is happening now. what happened? >> well, we think when we look at the data what's going on is that over time what has happened is the incomes for those at the very top of the distribution have grown very strongly, but those folks don't need to spend as large a share of their income. and so they're able to plow much of their income into savings. the bottom portion or the remainder of the income distribution, however, has seen stagnant or even declining wages
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when measured in real terms. and so what it does is it has the effect of reducing overall purchasing power in the economy which then translates directly into state budgets and we've seen stagnating revenues for the states. >> and you've been -- your report covered a 30-year period. do you see this trend continuing? >> we don't see at this present time we don't think this trend is going away. and so this is really going to be a situation that we believe states should be aware of as they plan and budget for upcoming years. >> and on your list, the number of states that have been struggling the most with this, california, we've been hearing a lot about california's financial problems for many years, but also states like connecticut, new jersey and florida. california and some of these other states solved the problem by raising income taxes. is that really working? is their financial situation better off? >> we ning the states are in something of a conundrum because when they raise tax rates on the top, like they did in
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california, sure, it helps speed up the rate of revenue growth, but it comes at a price and the price is revenue stability. and so it's perhaps even harder for states to manage unpredictable and volatile revenue straems more than just a gradual slowdown in the rate of revenue collection. >> you're in the credit ratings business. when you look at states with these financial problems, are their credit ratings coming down? are you downgrading them and what does that mean for their economic health? >> the way i would say it is i think that this issue is probably largely already reflected in the state credit ratings. we did lower the state of new jersey's bond rating last week, california's at a low level. we think some of this is a reflection of the issue we're talking about here. >> very interesting information. thanks a lot, gabe. >> thank you, susie. and still ahead on the program, investors are focused on the fed. so are executives in the sea
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sweep. you might be surprised by what james tisch wants the central bank to do. more now on alibaba, this week's huge initial public stock offering. investor demand for a piece of the chinese online retailer has been so great executives are raising the ipo's price range from a range of 60 to $66 a share to a new range of $66 to $68 a share. but according to a filing, the company will not increase the number of shares it plans to sell. apple's iphone 6 is flying off the shelves and is not even on store shelves yet. the company notched more than 4
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million preorders for its new larger iphone 6 models in just the first 24 hours. that's a new record and even more than its initial supply. deliveries will start this friday. but apple says because of the overwhelming demand, many customers won't receive their new phones until october. while apple looks to grab a bigger share of the smartphone market, amazon is aggressively pushing into the lucrative online gaming business. josh lipton has more on what amazon hopes to accomplish. >> amazon's ceo jeff bezos wants his company to dominate a lot of different industry, from e-commerce to cloud services. he is also very serious about video games. and recently agreed to pay nearly $1 billion to buy twitch, a streaming service where fans watch others play video games. >> it's so addicting.
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>> the idea of watching others play video games might sound unusual but it's becoming a very popular form of entertainment. in fact, twitch is the fourth largest source of u.s. internet traffic behind only netflix, google and apple, according to researcher deep field. amazon's executives are clearly excited about twitch's potential. >> they've been growing really fast, obviously. this is just a fantastic place to go and -- it's about socializing around games and over types we'll be working with ways to help them move faster in what they want the accomplish. >> but not just twitch. amazon is deploying a lot of capital and resources to the video game industry. the company now runs its own in-house gaming studio and is hiring developers to build games for its fire tv set-top box, smartphones and tablets. not every analyst is convinced amazon will succeed given the number of tech titans now battling for market share in
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this red-hot industry. >> at the end of the day i'm confident they won't win. they face formidable hurdles, you have well capitalized microsoft out there who won't let you take their business away without a fight. you have less well capitalized but deeply successful sony out there. you got pretty poorly operated nintendo out there but they have $910 billion on their balance sheet. none of these guys are giving up their market without a fight. research firm idc says the video game industry is now worth $91 billion. even if bezos controls a small share of that market, it could mean a lot of money for his company and its investors. josh lipton, "nightly business report," san francisco. shares of avanir soared to an eight-year high. the company's new drug to help reduce agitation in patients with alzheimer's delivered positive results in a clinical trial. based on those results, avanir's
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ceo says he plans to meet with regulators. >> we have a long path before we can get fda approval for this product, so our focus right now is to meet with the fda and other regulatory agencies, understand exactly what it's going to take to make this drug available. this is really a huge day for patients who have agitation due to alzheimer's. we're focused on how we can make this available to those patients as quickly as possible. >> shares surged 85%. shares of gilead sciences went the other way after news su surfaced that it's agreed to market a lower priced version of their drug sovaldi. it costs $1,000 a pill. shares fell to $199. according to reports, the video streaming giant is getting
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a frosty reception as french filmmakers accuse netflix of avoiding local taxes that subsidize french films. the stock slumped 4%. and terex, the constructionmaker, low erd its outlook citing weakness in the crane business. customers are struggling to secure financing. shares slummed to $42.47. economists market pros and other experts have all been debating on what policymakers will decide. but what do ceos want to hear? and what's their take on the economy and the environment for doing business? tonight we hear from lowe's ceo james tisch. >> my father was always taught by his mother, you get along
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with your brother. >> james tisch runs one of the largest family businesses in corporate america. he's ceo of lowe's, a 15 billion conglomerate headquartered in new york city. his brother andrew is co-chairman and his cousin jonathan is the other co-chair. tisch family members control more than 30% of the stock even though lowe's is a public company trading on the new york stock exchange. jim's father larry and his uncle robert started the company in the 1940s when they bought one resort hotel in lakewood new jersey and then kept on adding properties building up a hotel empire. they expanded into movie theaters buying the loew's chain, the cigarette business through lora lard and bulova watches. today they own hotels in the u.s. and canada, natural gas pipelines and diamond offshore drilling. tisch says his businesses are growing even though the economy
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is, quote, lukewarm. >> i think the economy is doing reasonably well. for the past five years the economy was growing at 2%. and my sense is that going forward now for the next year my fearless forecast is that it's good to grow by 3%. that may not sound like a big difference, but it really is. and i think it will make a big difference in corporate earnings. i think it will make a big difference over time about how people feel about the economy. i think it will make some difference. >> as you know, the federal reserve is meeting this weekend, the consensus is that policymakers will start raising interest rates in the middle of next year. how do you feel about that? are they doing the right thing? and will higher rates help or hurt your businesses? >> higher rates will help our business. we've had zero interest rate policy now for five years. savers have been unable to earn
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attractive returns in fixed income securities. and certain businesses like ours where our insurance business has a $45 billion portfolio that's invested primarily in fixed income, we, too, have been suffering from low interest rates. so from my perspective, they can't go up a minute too soon. >> what about your confidence level? as a ceo, are you confident about spending money to expand your businesses or making some acquisitions? >> i generally have confidence in the overall economy, but there are certain of our businesses are not experiencing the same growth that the economy is experiencing, so we're just not naturally investing in those business at that time. >> you certainly have a lot of cash at loew's. >> a million dollars. >> you've been making a lot of acquisitions. is it that you're not finding the good deals or something else is worrying you? >> one thing i like to say is we don't let the cash burn a hole
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in our pockets. while $5 billion is a lot of cash for us to have, i'm perfectly comfortable with it. it's been actually difficult to find businesses to buy. we look very carefully. we kick an awful lot of tires. we've come close on some, but just luck of the draw we haven't completed one yet. >> let's talk a little bit about energy. recently you sold one of your big natural gas properties. are you getting less bullish on energy? >> i'm bullish on the united states energy renaissance. it's extraordinary what's happened. with respect to our own investment in the gas exploration and production business, we've decided that now is the time to sell it, that gas prices are up from $2 to $4, that it would take a lot of investment for us to grow the business. and instead we decided to focus
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on other things. >> is there a point at which you'd say that maybe we just get out of the oil business? >> wen are in the business to stay. we're long-term players. the business is very cyclical. in my mind, the attraction of cyclical businesses is that you can -- by leaning against the wind, by leaning against the way things are going, you can really create a lot of value. >> what concerns you most as a ceo? >> one of the biggest worries i have is what's going on in washington. the united states has the highest tax rate in the western world. ours is 35%. other countries is 15 and 25%. u.s. businesses cannot compete long-term against competitors who have such lower tax rates. and it's incumbent upon the united states' political establishment to do something about it.
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a lot of companies are doing these cross-border deal, so-called inversions. do you think that's a good thing? >> it's a good thing to the shareholders of those companies, yes. is it a good thing for america? no. what's the cure for it? tax reform. it's that simple. >> tisch also says that the chances for tax reform this year is zero. next year maybe. if not then, it might not happen until after the 2016 presidential election. coming up on the program, remember lawson? the supercomputer made famous on "jeopardy," it could change the way kids learn. the fers in our series, the future of education, is next.
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the future of education. tonight we kick off this special three-part series. in part one, we look at supercomputers like ibm's watson, which is able to process information more like a human than a computer. right now watson contains and processes tons of information including documents, dictionaries and encyclopedias. that's a lot of information and artificially intelligent tutor could pass on to real life students. sharon epperson has our story. >> meet watson, the computer that knows pretty much everything. >> watson is the early stages the of a whole new area of compu computing. think about it as the ultimate assistant who has time to read everything and put together hypotheses as to what is going on. >> now imagine having watson as your personal tutor. that's what education could look like in 25 years. computers with the power of watson but in the form of
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wearable technology that will inevitably become smaller, cheaper, faster. >> so imagine having contact lenses for a fifth grader who has an earpiece which talks to them and gives them audio. this fifth grader can walk down the street, bring into existence a photo of a textbook from the 17th century. they can listen to their tutor ask them questions about what they're reading. this technology is quite visible from wre wry now. >> although it will be programmed to teach children, the focus of the tutors will be to learn about their pupils. >> they know the different pathways that learners take. if you're learning a times table that the really hard multiplications are 7 and 8. they know and can happy that. they have a whole battery of questions to nudge you farther along. >> imagine that for a fifth grader. i'm sharon epperson. and finally, an unhappy
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anniversary. today marks the sixth-year anniversary of the collapse of investment firm lehman brothers. the bankruptcy sent shivers down wall street and was followed by a massive slide in the markets. the housing market crisis and federal bailouts of some of the country's biggest companies. six years later the markets had reportedly reached historic highs. the nation's banking system is much healthier, housing is light-years from where it was and the job market is getting stronger. that's "nightly business report" for tonight. i'm susan gharib. have a great evening. we'll see you back here tomorrow night.
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the true pirates of the caribbean were feared by all, and the most terrifying of them all was francois le clerc. in the summer of 1563, heading home from the azores, le clerc and his crew came across the spanish galleon san cristobal. but they soon found themselves fighting not ordinary merchant seamen, but the personal guard of king phillip ii of spain. ( clattering ) sorry. carry on. though he finally won the day and found a huge shipment of gold, le clerc took heavy losses and was himself badly wounded. he was forced to take refuge here in sainte-marie. however, neither the treasure nor le clerc
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