let's get out to stefen in paris. >> the deal was announced.opean commission is about to approve the largest acquisition ever for general electric. they have already informed the company that the decision would come today ahead of the deadline set at the end of the week. regulators will meet and they're expected to make the announcement early in the afternoon at 2:00 central european time. however the green light will come with conditions and it's going to include part of the services business of alstom. something that ge didn't want to negotiate in the beginning because it's an important and recurrent source of revenues but to get the approval ge was eventually forced to make some concessions but in july general electric says it submitted the remedies to address it's concerns but never say publicly precisely what are these conditions in the meantime they reduce the deal in order to take into account these. the commission was concerned that the deal would reduce the competition and the gas to buy market in europe which could lead to higher pric

. >>> stefen is in paris with more on this. it looks like it's going to go ahead stefen. >> absolutely but for the time being alstom denies or declines to comment on the report and will still wait for the decision by the european commission due by september 11th. that's the deadline. according to the financial times they're close to a deal with the european commission and should get a green light very closely. disapproval would come after they agreed to make some concessions. they didn't say precisely where these concessions but only indicated that they were addressing the concern of the commission while preserving the economic and strategic value of the deal. alstom also made an effort and agreed to lower the amount it will receive from general electric, a discount of 300 million euros to reflect the concessions made by ge. general electric agreed to pay 12.4 billion euros to buy most of the units of alstom. the european commission decided to launch a full scale investigation at the beginning of the year on concerns that the d

thank you, stefen. >> it's true, isn't it? that's a nice summer to enjoy. >> it's a lovely place to enjoy the summer. a agree with that. >> let's talk about apple ceo tim cook. he's fresh off the launch of the new iphone 6s last weekend. he got to enjoy an appearance on the late show with steven colbert on tuesday night. they talked about the phones new features such as a 3-d touch and live photos as well as cook's former boss steve jobs of course. cook was answer thing around the comments from uber ceo that apple is working on a car but he did take one question from one hard working apple employee. can you guess who it is? siri. >> i asked in a tweet if she would come up with some questions for you and what nobody knows is that y'all did it. there are questions for tim cook on siri in that anyone in the world can access but nobody knew they were there. so i'd like to do one right now, okay. if we have a moment here, can i have siri ask a question. >> please. >> siri, what should i ask tim cook. >> do me a favor, ask him when

let's get out to stefen. >> well, the trial today is a result of an official inquiry from last year. it's not related to the main uber taxi service. it was made illegal last year. they refused to suspend the service in france arguing that they were against the enterprise. today two managers are facing trial in the building behind me. the head of uber france, they are on several charges including complicity of operating an illegal taxi service, and the use of personal data without the con sen of the french privacy watchdog. in theory he could face up to 2 years in jail but in practical materials they're more likely to get a financial penalty and in the worst case scenario for them a suspended jail sentence. >> we know that they're facing many issues in the countries they're operating in but would you say france is probably the most tricky one to operate in for the company. >> that's not their view. i spoke to them about the french situation despite the trial they still believe there's legal frame for private drivers in this country and it's not the case in some european countries like

stefen has all the details for us live in paris. >> good morning. total already made announcements in order to adapt the company to the new market conditions and mainly the low price of oil but it's expected to make additional announcement tomorrow during the investor days in london but the ceo of the company is going to announce new strategy, additional cost reduction and more asset and they already cut the budget to $1.9 billion this year down from last year. the company also says it's on track to meet it's asset disposal plan. $10 billion over the next three years and as part of the plan total announced it sold a part of its stake in the oil project in canada for 233 murder in the second degree. total may be active in terms of mergers and acquisition. it says that without additional resources in the short-term, total may have to even make acquisitions so we may have more announcement on that tomorrow. back to you. >> thank you for that. and total along with other french businesses are on their second day of a trip to iran. it's part of a bid to b

stefen has more on this interesting partnership. over to you. >> good morning. each company will bring it's own expertise and google will be able to bring big data. the key point is to monitor the level of sugar in the body which is the main problem for people with diabetes. the two companies are confident that they could reach some concrete results within 1 or 2 years and that's important because $400 million people are suffering with diabetes in the world and the number could rise to almost 600 million people over the next 20 years. diabetes treatment is a key part of the business. 20% of the total revenue last year including the best selling drug at sanofi in 2014. the problem is it lost it in the last few months. therefore it's now facing competition from generic treatments and that's the reason why they want to take some initiatives in order to maintain it's market shares on the market of diabetes treatments so that's very promising. that being said the market reaction was not very enthusiastic. it's a strategic move but we'll have to wait one or two years

now stefen has more from paris. >>> good morning, at first glance the numbers were strong for the first half of the year. 34% rise for the net profit in the second quarter. this is due to the good performance from the music vision. universal music had 19% increase in sales in the second quarter to compare with 9% for the group level. universal music benefitted from the good performance of the streaming music activity. however in term of outlook this activity will face the new competition from apple music even if vivendi claims it's too early to assess the impact of am music on the streaming industry. for now it's on track to meet it's full year target including a slight increase of its revenue on the growth of 10% of the adjusted net profit and it also indicated that vivendi is looking at important cash pile billion euros the company has after the last two years. the chairman didn't mention a specific target but says that vivendi was not interested in short-term strategy. now the market reaction was negative. you mention the downgrade in term of price target from plenty of brokers is al

. >> thank you stefen. >> all right. let's have a quick look at european markets.burgers this time around. >> no burgers? >> not for the european markets but we stopped the global sell off. the ftse 100 is only down 22%. glencore is rallying up. they're up by roughly 11%. xetra dax with 0.4%. the cac 40 up by a third of 1%. basic resources driving the bounce back after yesterday's heavy losses. >> let's check in on u.s. futures given that we are looking at a session so far across europe and five straight days of declines. that's what we're trading off of on wall street. the implied open telling us that we're going to be a little bit higher. recovering a little bit. the s&p 500 up 11 points so far and the nasdaq which was part of the biggest sell off yesterday up some 31 points when markets kick off. we're going to go to break and take a bit of a breather but billionaire investor carl icahn says there's danger ahead for the stock market. we'll tell you more after this. this is the place. ♪ ♪ their beard salve is made from ♪ ♪ sustainable tea tree oil and kale... you