great decisions is produced by the foreign policy association in association with thomson reuters. funding for great decisions is provided by pricewaterhousecoopers llp. (rhythmic ethnic music) it's an undertaking as massive as china itself. beijing is boldly extending claims to the south china sea. it's doing so through an enormous land reclamation project, dredging the sea floor to build islands. - it's very difficult for any foreign policy analyst to get to the core of what drives current chinese behavior. i think number one is this, the chinese have long held a view that this is part of their sovereign territory in territorial seas, goes back not just decades but centuries. - let me make this clear. the south china sea islands have been china's territory since ancient times. it is the bounds of duty of the chinese government to uphold china's territorial sovereignty and legitimate maritime rights and interests. - this is the rejuvenation of the chinese nation, and getting back what has been stolen from china, i believe, is part of realizing that dream. - they've been methodical

by.s go to juliet standing >> thomson reuters is in talks to sell a stake in a business that accountedfor half of the salese and offered annual with reuters reporting that the private equity firm is in talks to buy part of the business. bloomberg company of competes with thomson reuters. an agreement for an enterprise customerbolster the relations and they have generated sales in line with analyst expectations. william mcdermott will join us for his first interview of the day. creditors have been told there is a shortfall in the chinese conglomerate and their ability to repay debt. they briefed provincial officials last week and representatives would not respond to a request for comment. named frontrunners dimon, who says he plans to stay at the top job for five more years. that is your bloomberg business flash. europe andrn to jeremy corbyn said that the party would rule out nothing other than a second referendum. according to one in attendance, the concern was have the nextwill several minutes kicking off with brexit. i suppose that the first theyion is politics and are engaging in b

[announcer] great decisions is produced by the foreign policy association in association with thomson reuters. funding for great decisions is provided by pricewaterhousecoopers, llp. (soft arabian music) - [narrator] saudi arabia and the us are at odds culturally and ideologically yet for decades, they have been said to enjoy a special relationship based on shared interests. - on 1945, when the late king abdulaziz, the founder of modern saudi arabia met with the late president franklin roosevelt on an american destroyer called the quincy, there was a very strong strategic relationship that developed between the two countries. - there's lots of areas that we have to work together. we had times, have different views and different priorities and we have different values, we understand that but we share a common commitment to a more peaceful region and i think we can work with saudi arabia in order to accomplish that. - the special relationship about the united states and saudis comes down to one three-letter word which is oil and the saudis continues to have the largest reserves of oil in the wo

[narrator] great decisions is produced by the foreign policy association in association with thomson reuters. funding for great decisions is provided by pricewaterhouse coopers, llp. - [narrator] nations have always been in competition with each other. often, it's in the search for natural resources like oil and gas. a steady supply of energy is needed to fuel the country's economy and military. - [sachs] typically, american foreign policy like british imperial foreign policy before it, paid a tremendous amount of attention to securing oil for the economy. that includes who we have befriended, but it has also included us launching wars; stationing military bases; engaging in coups and orienting a massive amount of our foreign policy around oil. - [mcnally] by world war one, oil was transitioning to becoming the lifeblood of modern civilization. if electricity is literally the circuitry, without which modern life is impossible, oil is the lifeblood. - [jacobs] it's both vital to our economy and it's vital to our military. and that became true once we switched to an oil based military. - [narr

. -- thomson reuters. llp competes with thomson reuters.ided not huawei devices. francine: thank you. let's get back to one of our stories in the u.k. -- that is the pound. that is as sterling inches upward. let me bring you to my chart. rocky road.e's you can also argue that governor mark carney is getting a helping hand from the currency market as it helps with his efforts to bring down inflation did where does cable go from here? let's get to james bevan of ccla -- the successa of brexit is pound strength or not -- does it go higher than 1.50? was atwe thought 1.40 least acceptable for the baseline agreement. our baseline argument was we would get a baseline. whether it is a limited time period, which will likely have to be extended if a deal is agreed to, or if it is a fixed time period, concessions will have to be made by the u.k. to abide by that time line. it is interesting, that chart on the screen. that is consistent with our fair value estimate. 1.60 is where we are. when we talk to clients and investors, there, and retorts to cab

[narrator] great decisions is produced by the foreign policy association in association with thomson reuters. funding for great decisions is provided by pricewaterhouse coopers, llp. - [narrator] nations have always been in competition with each other. often, it's in the search for natural resources like oil and gas.

[announcer] great decisions is produced by the foreign policy association in association with thomson reuters

in association with thomson reuters. funding for great decisions is provided by pricewaterhousecoopers llp. - [narrator] everywhere around us are signs of international trade. - the basic idea of trade as economists have understood it now for two centuries is that trade expands the pie, it makes the economy more efficient, it directs resources to comparative advantages as economists say. but it also changes the income distribution. - we've come through this very long period in which the united states went from being a relatively closed economy to being quite an open one. and the result of that was a lot of competition for jobs, for wages, for export opportunities in sectors that really hadn't faced competition before. - [narrator] advances in communication, technology, and transport have thrown open the door to trade like no other time in history. - globalization is history, history is globalization, now everybody anywhere can trade with anybody anywhere else fairly easily due to improvements in infrastructure and techno

upbeat music) great decisions is produced by the foreign policy association in association with thomson reutersing for great decisions is provided by pricewaterhousecoopers llp. (rhythmic ethnic music)

the firm will buy a majority stake in thomson reuters financial risk unit.is valued at $60 billion. that's your bloomberg business flash. taylor, thank you. it is the final decision day for janet yellen as the current fed chair prepares to hand over leadership to jay powell. the central bank's focus remains on inflation. so, that is what we are focusing on. there is no news conference today, but the statement is likely to show no change to the benchmark rates. most will be looking at how the committee discusses inflation. we are joined by the citigroup head of global macroeconomics. thank you for joining us. what is the biggest danger for the markets today? is it that inflation is too high? or is it that we will have a repeat of 2017? we are waiting for inflation but it does not, strong as expected? >> at this stage, the upside risks for inflation are burning the central bankers. we have been waiting for inflation to pick up to the sort of levels we have been used to and a central bank's are targeting, but at the moment, as inflation creeps up, one concern i

bloomberg lp, the parent company of bloomberg news competes with thomson reuters in providing news, dataormation and the financial industry. the chairman of bloomberg lp is a nonexecutive director. three of america's most recognizable business figures are teaming up. jeff bezos is joining forces with warren buffett. healthompanies aim to care companies. the three firms say they plan to set up a new independent company that is free from profit making. health care stocks sunk on the news. that is your bloomberg business. let's get more reaction to the state of the union speech and turned to commodities. infrastructure was a key theme of the conversation. oil has been declining for a third consecutive day. we had industry data that shows u.s. crude stocks expending for the first time since november. on the other hand, you have this expectation that any further traction on infrastructure could feed into the rally. we saw key moves in some of the metals off the back of that anticipation of something more tangible. let's bring in mario. good to see you. pull up a chart just to lay the groundwo

bloomberg lp competes with thomson reuters.s chairman of bloomberg lp a nonexecutive director at blackstone. that is your bloomberg business flash. matt: thank you for that. now, let's focus on the euro area economy. headline inflation is likely to have slowed in january. we look at that data at 10:00 a.m. u.k. time. economists expect that volatility will be absent from the core measure. let's talk about which measures will mean what for the ecb stimulus plans. richard jones joins us now from berlin. richard, some pretty strong growth numbers out of europe recently. we have seen a slowdown in inflation, especially in the core german numbers, which were out yesterday. what is going on? i think thel, growth backdrop is very favorable. i looked at 2.7% growth across the euro area, and that is broad-based. you and i living in germany know about the economic growth story here and the strength we are seeing in europe's biggest economy, but the broad-based growth we saw yesterday is positive. the big challenge for the ecb is to turn t

lp is the parent company of bloomberg news and competes with thomson reuters in providing news and informationnancial industry. a nonexecutive director at blackstone. apple is responding to u.s. government queries about a software update that affected older iphones. the company says it would never do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any of its products. wasier, the sec investigating if they violated disclosure laws. that is your bloomberg business flash. 's a january to forget for cryptocurrency investors. bitcoin is down about 30% almost on a one-month basis and now trading just slightly below $10,000 per going. this comes as virtual currency exchanges are said to be subpoenaed by u.s. regulators. facebook is going to ban ads tied to digital currencies, warning that they are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices. eric lam joins us now from hong kong. where does this leave cryptocurrency investors? surely, they are used to bad news from regulators -- but this from facebook seems to be a difficult pill to swallow. eric: they really difficult month

blackstone is buying 55% on thomson reuters financial business. pension plan investment board and gic. they evaluated unit at about $20 billion including debt. they will retain a 45% equity stake including the newswire. >> the top shareholder struggling the low group wants -- -- official investigation. this will wipe out most existing investors, it is written to the singapore exchange and they are that this is grounds for an inquiry, is directors and its management. that they have likely rebounded from a record low and it may have tripled on cost-cutting and higher energy prices. the biggest oil and gas producer forecasts a net income for 2017 may have risen by $2.5 billion. the result is three years of decline. worstaw petrochina's profits. >> japan's leading messaging service is expanding into cryptocurrency trading as well as insurance and other financial services. we are told that it has established a holding from anyplace to launch its products in asia and beyond. this aims to expand to hong kong and luxembourg. they want to become an old one

this is no the news business they say in a memo that thomson reuters have been able to transform themselvesepresenting an opportunity to deliver on that promise while accelerating a strong business black stone would be shareholder of this potential sale what i would add to this is we may see more of this companies willing to sell businesses or even in whole or part because of tax reform there was a time where you might have had an appendix to your company and a unit that you want to sell but the tax leakage given your base was simply too high to think of doing it. no longer. what i hear from a lot of bankers that you will see this year of the mma and this maybe an example of that is going to be companies selling parts of themselves that they don't feel unnecessarily as they once were because they are not suffering the leakage of values they would have given the lower rates on taxes. >> can you give us other examples of what it could be >> i think there is a lot of different companies that you can imagine that may pursue a spin or a sale. >> a sale of something because that's when you will b

also much stronger than the expectations of 56 cents that we're getting from thomson reuters in termsforecast that is, of course, going to be driven by subscriber growth. the company says it expects 6.35 million new subscribers in q1 versus the 5 million expected. so, we're looking at stronger than expected guidance for q1 as well as that subscriber beat in the quarter. now, just looking at one -- one note here and why the profitability wasn't higher. they note two noncash charges. one was a $26 million cash tied to foreign exchange. interestingly, there's also a $39 million noncash charge for unrealized content they didn't decide to go forward with. they didn't say exactly what it is here, but we can assume it's due to killing the kevin spacey movie and writedowns on unreleased episodes related to "house of cards" after that kevin spacey scandal so, real strength here and i'm going to continue to dig through this they mentioned "the crown," "black mirror" and "stranger things" as content driving the stronger than expected subscriber additions in the quarter. you see the stock is now

. >>> thomson reuters, higher after confirming it is in talks to sell off its financial terminals andata business to the blackstone group. that is a private equity firm. that stock is up 10%. >>> health insurers, after amazon, berkshire, jpmorgan joined to improve health care, health insurers, all of them on the downside all across the board. health stocks down today. stayig on stocks, goldman sachs reported that there will be a correction in coming months. who better to deal with that jack hough. stuart: "barron's" senior editor. is this the start of big correction, jack hough? >> it could be. it has been so long, decades since we had a meaningful correction. we're due for one. what they're not saying we're due for a bear market. when you look what is going on with corporate america, the percent of companies beating on revenues, earnings canning fudged in the short term, revenues, real indicator coming in the door, that is the highest on record going back to 2008. numbers are very good for corporate america here. stuart: in your opinion you don't think this is the start of a bear mar

thompson-reuters is in talks with the blackstone group about a potential partnership that will account for half of its revenue. we must know that bloomberg competes with thomsonines. stepping down from a company that has been struggling with loss and debt. he is leaving to pursue other opportunities. he planned to push sales above $5 million to the current $3 billion mark but quarter losses $80 million.to let's look at what is happening in japan. they are in talks with chipmaker maxim. worth $20ould be billion and that sent shares up the most in 20 years. it says that claims of acquisition talks are not -- the beverage empire is moving into soft drinks. is buying dr pepper and it will make it a challenger to coca-cola. that is the corporate news. markets?s the budget. before the >> it does look like corporate tax cuts could help the way as modi is experiencing a budget squeeze. this index down by .04 oepercen. tata steel rising solidly on the onk of the moves commodity. utilities up .01 percent. indian companies in focus. tomorrow we're hearing from two of the biggest banks. investors and analysts looking for lending margins and loan growth guidance. lowould