23/05/2016 World Business Report

Those are the latest headlines from BBC World News.

Now for the latest financial news with

The World's largest insurer, AXA, stubs out almost $2 billion worth

Japan's Central bank governor defends his negative interest rate

policy, and warns that the UK leaving the EU would be

Welcome to World Business Report, I'm Victoria Fritz.

In a minute we'll look ahead to Ryanair's full year results.

But first, the world's largest insurer, French AXA,

will stop investing in the tobacco industry and sell investments worth

It says investing in the sector makes no sense,

given that smoking kills some six million people a year.

The move by Axa is an attempt to support government efforts to reduce

Imogen Foulkes met up with AXA's incoming Chief Executive,

The reason is very simple. We are a large provider of healthcare

insurance, and what we are seeing more and more is that chronic

diseases cost a lot of money. We need to invest more into prevention

and we really want to support that and not invest in tobacco, which

creates more diseases. Aren't you a bit late with this? Your health

insurance company, it is more than 50 years since governments were

first warned about the dangers of tobacco. You can only really see

now, in tobacco, but it has turned from a lethal disease to a chronic

disease. Now is the right time to do it and it is a time where the public

awareness for prevention is much higher. For prevention, you need the

willingness of the institution to do it, and also the willingness of the

individual. Is one of the reasons also, of all the time it has taken

to diversify, that tobacco was traditionally a good, safe

investment? If you look at some angles, you could say it is a very

interesting investment. But there are other products that are very

interesting to us. It is important as an investor to invest in

something that is stable. Will it affect the finances of AXA? It will

definitely affect the finances, but you have two sides. You have one

side where if you diversify and lose the unit and potentially have to

reinvest in something else, but on the other hand you have less claims

the cost if you achieve making use of prevention and have lower chronic

diseases. For us it is positive and therefore also positive for

shareholders. Japan's central bank governor has

told the BBC that a UK exit from the European Union would be

a major risk to global growth. The Bank of Japan's Haruhiko Kuroda

also defended his controversial Mr. Kuroda was speaking with

our Asia Business Correspondent, Karishma Vaswani, on the sidelines

of the G7 meetings in Japan. It is up to British people to decide

whether or not to exit from the EU. But suddenly in the latest G20

communication, it has been shown that this could potentially be quite

serious. If a Brexit is agreed, it could have significant is on the

global economy. What about on Japan's economy? I'm afraid that

through charade, and the global economy, including Japan, as well as

the US, that could be affected. But as I said, the decision is up to the

British people. The implementation of negative into dressed by black --

interest rates in January took everybody by surprise. When do you

think it will start to have an impact on Japan's economy and what

are the options if it doesn't? We announced it in January, and

implemented the new policy in the middle of February. We are still

early in May. Although the impact on the financial market is quite clear

already, the impact on the greater economy and prices will take some

more time. I don't say that it will take one or two years or something

like that. It would have an impact on the economy soon. If we think it

is necessary to achieve 2% inflation, we can change our

monetary policy. I think we have still got enough room to do

something. In other news: Exports from Japan

fell by 10% in April compared with It's the seventh consecutive

month of falls. Imports plunged 23%,

putting the trade balance The weak trade data is thought to be

mainly due to poorer demand from The Greek parliament has approved

several economic and financial reforms after

a bitter four-day emergency debate The bill includes tax rises,

and also creates a privatisation Thousands

of people demonstrated outside Egypt has enlisted

a robotic submarine to search the Mediterranean seabed

for the black boxes of the missing EgyptAir plane that

vanished from radar on Thursday. It is hoped that the recorders

can determine whether the plane The Airbus A320 was en route

from Paris to Cairo with 66 people With me is John Strickland,

airline expert from JLS Consulting. What is worse for the industry in

terms of sentiment, if we find out it was an attack or an accident?

Does it matter whether it is difficult to give an answer in

precise terms. Neither is good. --? It is difficult. We would expect to

see a technical fault that would point to wider questions about the

use of that aircraft. Unfortunately we may also becoming more used to a

terrorist attack occurring. If we would even further back to one of

the biggest terrorist attacks with the twin towers back in 2001, what

we see overtime is that those kind of attacks tend to be recovered

from. It does worry people at a time when we are not certain exactly what

caused what. Be disparaged picture that is opening up because of the

response to these big issues worldwide, one of them companies

that has done very well is Ryanair. They seem to be in a very strong

position and we will be hearing their results later today. Yes, over

1 billion euros is the expectation. They continue to grow last year.

They watch their costs tremendously, that is helped by the falling price

of fuel. They are giving a lot of savings back into their affairs. The

low fare approach a dog is to their advantage, because it puts pressure

on the competitors. They also put effort into customer service which

seems to have paid off. And you will stay with those -- with us to

discuss those results later on. Asian session has been mixed,

markets have started to entertain the prospect of a rate rise

in the States, after Fed meeting minutes showed policymakers weren't

shying away from raising rates Japan's Nikkei was hurt on worrying

economic data on manufacturing trade imbalances, as well

as reports that Japan's sales tax