21/11/2012 World Business Report

Church's governing session. Now for the latest financial news

Welcome to World Business Report. Here are the headlines: Moving the

debt mountain - agreement proves elusive for lenders to Greece on

how to reduce its debt pile. And Japan posts its worst October

trade figures in more than three decades.

And Hewlett-Packard's shares plunged 12% in the US after the

firm says autonomy is only worth a Once again they met and once again

they failed to come to a compromise in the early hours of this morning.

Jean-Claude Juncker said the talks, which lasted nearly 12 hours, would

reconvene on Monday. The finance ministers and IMF are struggling to

agree on ways to make Greece's debt mountain sustainable in the long-

term. Agreement on this issue is needed for the group of creditors

to pay Greece its next batch of rescue loans. I am joined by a dull

guest at -- by our guest. It is exhausting, isn't it? It is. Talk

us through this latest hurdle. Why can they not overcome their

differences? What you had last week is an agreement to expand the time

horizon from Twenty20, to 2022, for Greece to achieve a certain target

of debt to GDP, which was the 120 %. The IMF is really strong on that.

By delaying that deadline you are giving a little bit of room for

breathing for Greece. We are adding 15 billion euros of additional debt

needed in order to do this. I think what we are seen here is really a

disagreement between Christine Lagarde and Europe on this because

of the conditions that are attached to the extra debt. I think what we

are seeing here is clearly there will be more negotiation and also

by Monday -- had three by Monday they will have a clear path of

additional conditions that go along with his extension of the deadline.

At this point, all the lenders are at pains to say they are actually

quite pleased to have Greece has been doing lately, hence they have

the extra time. They are seen Greece made significant changes. It

is not about Greece this time it, is it? I think that is really an

important point. What you have seen is some improvement in competitive,

-- competitiveness, some improvement of sweat. For the first

time we have three months of positives, which is really

important. There has been a lot of discussion about austerity not

working. Actually, this could be the beginning of it working. On one

hand he did not want to drop this. I think that is the IMF's view. On

the other hand, giving them a little bit of breathing Room is

probably wise. As ever. Thank you very much. I will let you go away

and read today's papers. We have to move on because the

Japanese yen and today is -- today has fallen to a seven-month low.

The country released trade figures that were much worse than expected.

We cross to AirAsia business Harbour in Singapore. In a way we

are not surprised to hear things are tough in Japan. But it is worse

than expected, isn't it? That is right. Amongst the worst October

figures in some three decades. These exports falling for a fifth

month. The trade deficit is at $6.7 billion up from a year ago.

Shipments are falling over 6% in October. Exports to China in

particular declining over 11 %. Very bad figures there. Essentially

it was the territorial dispute with China that has turned a lot of

sales. The EU has been heard by the continuing debt crisis. Japan's

economy is heavily reliant on exports and the slowdown bend is

hurting its growth. Analysts are saying that the uncertain global

economic conditions are also affecting it. Japan's exports may

continue to be weak in the coming months. The data comes just weeks

after Japan reported that its economy contracted in the July-

September period. As you mentioned, after this release of the figures,

the yen fell to a seven-month low, which ironically has helped export

reliant stocks climbed on the markets today. This is despite the

fact that this is the St -- these are the same companies that are

worst hit in this data. Watchdogs in the US and UK have the

job of figuring out who was to blame for the software scandal that

has rocked Silicon Valley. Shares in Hewlett-Packard plunged 22% on

Tuesday following its disclosure it made a loss of $8.8 billion on the

value of a British company bourse last -- it bought last year. A year

ago he unpacked cardboard autonomy for just over $11 billion. --

Hewlett-Packard port. The company says that autonomy had engaged in

disclosure failures and at right misrepresentations. It has now

referred the deal to the serious Fraud Office in London and the

Securities and Exchange Commission in the US. The chief executive

mention the allegations about autonomy at a press conference.

senior executive, a member of the team, came forward to inform us

about certain things he was very worried about in terms of

accounting improprieties, disclosure failures and outright

misrepresentations. We launched an investigation led by Price

Waterhouse Coopers and uncovered a whole host of very concerning

accounting improprieties and misrepresentations. The founder of

autonomy, who was also the boss of the company when it was taken over,

is saying mismanagement of the firm by its new owners was to blame for

the decline in its value. It has managed the company very badly. It

lost around half of the staff before I left. The Hall of the

management team. The value of that company has now fallen and they

have been forced to write it off. I think this is a way of distracting

from the management problem. Today's the day they are announcing

the worst results in the 70-year history of the business.

Can Europe before a space programme? Many would argue the

carried overwhelming debt crisis means the answer is a firm note, at

least for now. Ministers in charge of space activities within the 20

European Space Agency member-states and Canada seem to think so. They

are meeting in Naples to decide on future space projects and proposed

investments. Let's go live to Strasbourg and speak to Professor

water pages. -- water Peters. Why should Europe in its best -- invest

in space now? First of all, space technology has a long lead time. It

takes 10-20 years before technology is ready to be launched into space.

If you want to stay competitive in 10 or 12 years from now we have to

continue to invest into the technology which will be ready for

us in the future. But surely it is quite clear, given the fact that

many economies in Europe are asking for financial bail-outs, that the

money is not there right now. money is restricted. I think what

they are discussing in Naples is with the limited amount of money

what are the points that we should put our emphasis on in order to

ensure competitiveness of an industry which is a sector that is

giving a lot of return in the long- term GDP. Not on the short-term,

but in long-term there is a factor of at least three or four.

We will have to be that there, but thank you for your argument.

Now, interesting market figures. Japan is up by 0.7%, which is good

news. It would seem that the investors are shrugging off those

trade figures that we have spoken about. Exports have tumbled in

Japan. Having said that, let's have a look at the end, which may well

explain why the Nikkei 225 is trading high. The yen has weakened