11/11/2015 BBC Business Live


11/11/2015

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This is Business Live from BBC News with Ben Thompson and Sally Bundock.

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$5 billion in sales in just 90 minutes - the world's biggest

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shopping day is happening right now, and you probably don't even know it.

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China's Singles Day smashes records again with millions hitting

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Live from London, that's our top story on 11th November.

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Launched by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, for 24 hours,

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shoppers who are unmarried and unattached go online and splurge

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So how big a deal is singles day we go live to Beijing to find out.

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Long haul travel just got even longer.

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With cheap fuel and more efficient planes -

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But not everyone is happy, not least those cramped in the economy seats.

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And markets are barely moved despite better than expected retail

:01:13.:01:15.

figures from the world's second largest economy.

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We'll assess what China's 11% rise in sales means for the rest of us.

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And he's been described as the only tech entrepreneur not to have made

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a billion dollars - the founder of the free online encyclopaedia

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And as those super long haul flights return,

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How do you make your long air journey bearable?

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If you're living outside of China, there's a retail phenomenon that

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It's called Singles Day and as the name suggests,

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it began in the 90s as a day for single people to treat themselves.

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In 2009, the online retail firm Alibaba adopted the day to promote

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a massive online shopping sale which has now also been adopted

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Last year, Alibaba recorded $9.3 billion in sales during the annual

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event, making it the biggest online shopping day in the world.

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A short while ago the E-commerce giant announced that it has already

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broken that record with $5 billion worth of goods sold in

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the first 90 minutes alone and there are still quite a few hours to go.

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Celia Hatton joins us now from our Beijing Bureau.

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We are describing as a phenomena, but it is quite extraordinary, isn't

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it? Alibaba saying it smashed last year's record-breaking day.

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It is hard to believe that Alibaba only nominated singles day as a

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special shopping holiday just six years ago and already, it really has

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transformed the face of commerce in China. Many people in China will

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stop shopping in the weeks leading up this to event. They will wait so

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they can buy goods on 11th November. It is an important day in China.

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There is one thing ordering, the dmaend, but meeting the demand and

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supplying the goods and getting them to where they need to be must be an

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enormous task? Oh, absolutely. In fact, many shoppers complain that

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they don't really want to buy things online today because it takes so

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long for them to be delivered, but Chinese courier companies say they

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will leap into action to solve the problem that happened in past years.

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Chinese state media is reporting that 1.7 million people will be

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involved in working for courier companies to make sure the goods

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will get delivered to the places they need to go. That uses 230

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delivery vans will fan out across the country starting today.

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Is this going to last, do you think? Here in the UK, one of our big

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retailers announced they are not going to do the Black Friday thing

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anymore because of shopper fatigue. In sign of that in China, it would

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seem? No. I do think this holiday will

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continue to be very, very important on the Chinese calendar. It is a

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time, it is really the major shopping holiday of the year in

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China. So I don't think it will go away any time soon. However, a loft

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other online retailers are trying to compete with Alibaba. That's the

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world's biggest online shopping platform. There are rivals that are

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trying to introduce their own shopping holidays for example 12th

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December, it will be the next major online shopping holiday in China,

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but I don't think singles day will go away any time soon. Thank you

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very much, Celia. Do you still get it treat yourself

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if you're not single? I think everybody is at it today. The bar

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gains are there to be had. Forget your status. Just go for it.

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Prosecutors have charged three men relating to the largest cyber-attack

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Personal information for 100 million people was accessed by cyber-thieves

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Twelve institutions were victims of the hacking including JP Morgan,

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Revenue at Tencent, China's biggest gaming and social network firm, has

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jumped more than 30% to $4.2 billion in the three months to September.

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It's a five month high for the firm, thanks to a surge

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The number of users of its popular messaging app, WeChat, rose by

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almost 40% in the period to 650 million.

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A vivid pink diamond weighing over 16 carats has sold

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at auction in Geneva for over $28 million.

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The auction house, Christie's, said only three pink stones

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in this category had come up for sale over the past 250 years.

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The diamond known as The Pink was purchased by an unidentified Chinese

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I don't think that will go on a finger. It will go inside a vault.

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Have you any on your finger? No, sorry, any offers!

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On the Business Live page, we have got lots of stories. This one is

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pretty monster. It is being reported this deal is done. $121 billion,

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about 112 billion euros. It means Inbev is buying Miller.

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Look at this image. This sums-up the frenzy that Celia was talking about

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in Beijing. More about Singles Day on the BBC website and more about

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other stories around there as well. Staying in the region, we have had

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more data from China. This time retail sales are getting a boost

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from the figures. They will be in the next set of figures. But

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industrial figures from China. Bring us up-to-date. Some good figures

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beating expectations as far as the retail figures are concerned?

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The retail figures are good, but the rest was mixed, I should say.

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Industrial production slowing to 5.6% in October. That was worse as

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expectations would come in higher. Retail sales were good. They came in

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a tad above expectations, up 11% which shows the jury is pretty much

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out when it comes to China's economy which is overall slowing. You heard

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earlier about Singles Day and a massive amount being spent on E

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commerce sites there which suggest otherwise, but economists are saying

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that a lot of this has been factored into the numbers and it shows how

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China's economy is starting to change from one that's manufacturing

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to one that is more consumer demand focussed. This is something the

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Chinese Government wants. The data did have a mixed impact on markets

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which pulled back slightly after their release, but most have

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appeared to have closed flat to higher. Sharon,ed to to see you.

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Thank you very much. To show you the numbers. Markets have been

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struggling for any direction over the last few days. Largely as a

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result we should say because of commodity prices. They have been

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struggling and that, as always, reigniting fears over deflation.

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Japanese stocks as you can see marginally higher after new retail

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figures showing sales in China rising 11% year-on-year in October

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coming in ahead of expectations, but over in Hong Kong, the market ending

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down on the session. A look at Europe, today we will get the latest

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update on the jobs market in the UK with September's unemployment rate

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expected to hold at 5.4%, but the interesting thing, as always, is

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looking at the average earnings figure. They are expected to rise by

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2.3%. Inflation is flat here in the UK. So inevitably, that hopefully

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means more money in the pockets of con seamers in the run-up to the

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holiday period. That's the current state of play across Europe, but

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what about the US. What is happening there? Let's get the details from

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New York. One of the nation's largest retailers Maisie's will

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report third quarter earnings. Last quarter Maisie's disappointment

:10:06.:10:08.

investors and analysts still see more challenges ahead. Department

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stores have been facing competition from online shopping and declining

:10:13.:10:17.

purchases as a result of the strong dollar and the warm weather has hurt

:10:18.:10:22.

the company's bottom line as consumers delay purchasing winter

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essentials like coats and boots. And Maisie's along with other US

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retalers such as Gap and Costco will this year share in the profits from

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the biggest online shopping day, China's Singles Day. Alibaba has

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been credited with commercialising with what is an anti-Valentine's

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Day, Chinese students celebrating their single status by buying

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themselves gifts! It is all about Singles Day. Briton win Curtis is

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with us. We have got UK jobless figures out

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and average earnings numbers out later this morning and we have got

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in Germany inflation figuring out tomorrow among other bits and bobs.

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Give us your sense of where we are. Everyone is looking ahead to the

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decision next month from the Fed? If we didn't get a hike from the Fed

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next month, that will be a surprise for the markets. They would probably

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go up a bit, but it is still hanging over us so they should just go ahead

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and do it. Today, the earnings figures in the UK are quite

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important because inflation, deflation, or disinflation,

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deflation, depending where you are is really important. If they start

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going up then everyone will start putting in for, you know, a rate

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hike earlier. The expectation is they're going to go up? 3.2% is the

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average expectation for the earnings of the that's interesting the gap

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between what we are spending in inflation and what we are earning

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means we should have more money in our pocket and it should translate

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into better equity figures. If people are feeling good and

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confident and we have seen it in the UK. We haven't seen it in lots of

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other parts of the world. If you look at China, yes, retail sales are

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up. Today is a fantastic day, but over a long period of time, they're

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trying to change from, you know a production based economy, export

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based economy into consumption and that's in the next five year plan,

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they are trying to do it. It's really hard and in the meantime,

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growth is slowing. The OECD cut their numbers for global growth

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again. We still have Europe, you know, pumping money in, Japan

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pumping money in. So it is one of those things where the markets are

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very uncertain and going nowhere at moment. Right, thank you, Briton

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win. Briton win will return. She will give us her take on long haul

:12:57.:13:00.

flights as well as looking at the other stories in business. We will

:13:01.:13:04.

be asking for your tips on how to get through a long haul flight. Keep

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your messages coming in. They send shivers down my spine with three

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little boys. Disaster that's probably as bad!

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Still to come - where do you go when you need to know?

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We will be speaking to Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia,

:13:21.:13:23.

about the invention that changed the way we find information

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and his new telecoms company that wants to give back to charity.

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You're with Business Live from BBC News.

:13:30.:13:43.

The telecoms company Talk Talk has said it expects

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the cyber-attack on the company's website to cost up to ?35 million.

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The personal details of more than 150,000 customers were

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And the company admitted that of those, more than 15,000 bank account

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The company's half-year results are out today and our business editor,

:13:55.:14:00.

Kamal Ahmed, has been speaking to the chief executive, Dido Harding.

:14:01.:14:09.

What did she tell you? More positive from Dido Harding. The half-year

:14:10.:14:19.

results are the first time TalkTalk made it clear to the markets what

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the cost of the cyber breach was last month. ?35 million, they are

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going to be spending money on giving free upgrades to their customers,

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trying to retain their customers and I asked Dido Harding this morning,

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despite the controversy, I asked her whether the business was still

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performing well? The early signs are quite

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encouraging. Most customers tell us they think we've done the right

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thing. We, of course, saw a step up or spike in customers cancelling

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direct debts, but after a few days, we saw many of the customers

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reinstating their direct debits again. Time will tell, but the early

:14:59.:15:06.

signs are is that customers think we are doing the right thing. If we

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look at share price this morning, up over 12%. You see the big dip that

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happened there when they announced the cyber attack. This big

:15:15.:15:17.

improvement this morning. It seems that investors are saying that

:15:18.:15:21.

TalkTalk is operating well and that despite the cyber attack, this is a

:15:22.:15:25.

business actually, it is at the cheaper end of the mobile business,

:15:26.:15:30.

customers do seem to have stuck with the business, Churn, that's the

:15:31.:15:33.

difference between the number of people leaving and the number of

:15:34.:15:36.

people joining a business is slightly up, but actually it hasn't

:15:37.:15:39.

been the calamity that many believed.

:15:40.:15:43.

Thanks a lot. It is interesting to see the share price reaction today.

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Thank you very much. That's the latest on TalkTalk.

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Sainsbury's also out with their latest numbers? Yes, that is after

:15:53.:16:00.

what has been a pretty tough time for all the big retailers. You can

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see, like-for-like sales excluding fuel also down 1.6%. The interview

:16:05.:16:12.

with the chief executive, who also managed to plug a number of his

:16:13.:16:13.

products. Our top story... E-commerce giant

:16:14.:16:18.

Alibaba has broken its own record for sales on

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China's Singles Day, the world's The firm said sales surpassed

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the record amount of $9.3 billion made last year

:16:27.:16:32.

in just over half the time. Today's guest needs

:16:33.:16:39.

little introduction. Jimmy Wales is

:16:40.:16:42.

an internet entrepreneur and tech visionary, best known

:16:43.:16:46.

for founding Wikipedia, the global Despite being the 5th most visited

:16:47.:16:50.

website in the world, he receives NO The organisation is not-for-profit,

:16:51.:17:00.

raising $50 million a year in donations to pay for the servers

:17:01.:17:08.

that host its pages and the Jimbo, as he is known online,

:17:09.:17:11.

grew up in Huntsville, Alabama. His family were among the first

:17:12.:17:17.

in town to own a computer - a Tandy TRS80 - and his career

:17:18.:17:21.

so far is colourful taking on many roles from open internet campaigner

:17:22.:17:27.

to hedge fund speculator. In 2004,

:17:28.:17:32.

he founded the for-profit company Wikia, a collection of individual

:17:33.:17:35.

Wikis on different subjects, Today he lives in London,

:17:36.:17:38.

making a living as a public speaker He is also co-chair of the People's

:17:39.:17:46.

Operator, a Shoreditch-based mobile phone service that gives part

:17:47.:17:54.

of its profits to charity While thanks were coming in. Jimbo -

:17:55.:18:12.

do you like that or not? Yes, actually, I always signed my e-mails

:18:13.:18:18.

like that. So it is your fault? Yes, but most people just call me Jimmy.

:18:19.:18:23.

It seems a long time ago, 2001, and you started Wikipedia. Just talk us

:18:24.:18:28.

through the thought process, because it was not the first thing you came

:18:29.:18:33.

up with, was it? Yes, the original concept was the same vision, a free

:18:34.:18:38.

encyclopaedia written by volunteers, owing to be called Newpedia. But we

:18:39.:18:45.

did not know how to do it online, so it was very top-down, a a very

:18:46.:18:52.

academic recess to get it published. And that was a failure. Then we came

:18:53.:18:56.

up with the concept of the open website which anyone can edit, and I

:18:57.:19:02.

set that up, and very quickly we have more work done in two weeks

:19:03.:19:08.

then we had done in two years. It is run by volunteers, a community,

:19:09.:19:13.

non-profit-making, but presumably you needed some money to get it

:19:14.:19:17.

going in the first place? It was very, very cheap, actually. In the

:19:18.:19:25.

beginning, we just had one server, actually, space on a shared server.

:19:26.:19:29.

Like a lot of things online, it is quite easy to get started with

:19:30.:19:33.

something new. The original software was freely available, open source

:19:34.:19:39.

software, so I just downloaded it. Only later, the expenses started to

:19:40.:19:44.

mount up as the traffic grew. By this time we had set it up to get

:19:45.:19:48.

the donations in the nonprofit scenario. Wikipedia, 285 languages,

:19:49.:19:57.

20 billion page views, the fifth most visited website. One estimate

:19:58.:20:04.

suggested that if that could carry advertising, it would be worth $5

:20:05.:20:08.

billion. Do you ever regret that you did not do it differently? No,

:20:09.:20:15.

Wikipedia is fantastic. For me, it is now a cultural institution which

:20:16.:20:17.

will be remembered hundreds of years from now. It has been amazing to be

:20:18.:20:22.

part of that community and give this a amazing gift to the world. Anyone

:20:23.:20:31.

I speak to about Wikipedia, it is about the reliability of the

:20:32.:20:36.

information, which is fundamental to its existence, really, that people

:20:37.:20:41.

trust it. For example, my page is not quite right. Everybody...! Don't

:20:42.:20:48.

believe it! So how do you manage that and police that? You have your

:20:49.:20:54.

community of volunteers but how do you know you will not be sabotaged

:20:55.:20:57.

by one of them, who just does not like Wikipedia? The volunteers all

:20:58.:21:03.

monitor each other. There is a huge amount of discussion going on, a lot

:21:04.:21:08.

of different projects going on to improve the of Wikipedia. Wiki

:21:09.:21:14.

Project Africa, for example, to go through all of the entries about

:21:15.:21:18.

Africa and rate them and look for quality improvements and things like

:21:19.:21:22.

that. We tend to be very old-fashioned in our demand for

:21:23.:21:24.

quality sourcing and things like that. You have experience of this

:21:25.:21:33.

caring, sharing, sharing with the community, which is the ethic which

:21:34.:21:36.

has founded the new mobile phone company. You might say it is a very

:21:37.:21:41.

crowded space to be in, especially here in the UK. You want to do it

:21:42.:21:45.

differently by giving some money to charity. How will it work? 10% of

:21:46.:21:51.

your bill goes to the cause of your choice. Rantie 5% of the companies

:21:52.:21:57.

profits go to charity. We are not profitable yet, but... -- 20%. The

:21:58.:22:04.

way we can afford this is by cutting out the marketing budget. The

:22:05.:22:10.

marketing budget IS the donations. You can switch to ours and we will

:22:11.:22:13.

spend it on something you care about. Briefly, that is the way you

:22:14.:22:18.

market, through people's conversations? Yes. And I say this,

:22:19.:22:24.

word-of-mouth is really powerful these days. If people are not doing

:22:25.:22:30.

the right things, word spreads very quickly. People tell each other

:22:31.:22:34.

about it and we will get more customers. It brings more money for

:22:35.:22:40.

the causes. We say it every day, we wish we had more time. But thank you

:22:41.:22:45.

so much for coming in. It has been fascinating. I am really intrigued

:22:46.:22:49.

now to look at your Wikipedia page! It's the stuff of James Bond movies

:22:50.:22:53.

- a jetpack you can fly off on The Martin Jetpack is being

:22:54.:22:57.

exhibited at the Dubai Airshow. As Jeremy Howell reports, it is not

:22:58.:23:03.

just for the playboy millionaire. Jetpack was not made for millionaire

:23:04.:23:15.

fun seekers. It is designed primarily for rescue work. Take a

:23:16.:23:19.

collapsed building, you can get their relatively quickly. And also

:23:20.:23:23.

you do not know what is on the other side, so you can get across their

:23:24.:23:30.

own have a look. One important thing is for individuals to know that they

:23:31.:23:36.

are recognised as being in trouble. The jetpack is driven by two

:23:37.:23:40.

turbofan engines. Joysticks control height and direction. Top speed,

:23:41.:23:48.

74km/h. Rescue services in Dubai have offered to buy a fleet of them.

:23:49.:23:53.

It will go on sale to private buyers in two years' time. The price is

:23:54.:23:57.

about 200,000 dollars, and it comes with a parachute.

:23:58.:23:59.

What other business stories has the media been taking an interest in?

:24:00.:24:02.

Bronwyn Curtis is joining us again to discuss.

:24:03.:24:05.

We are talking about the new ultra long haul a view issue, 19 hours in

:24:06.:24:17.

the air. You are the queen of long-haul flying, just back from

:24:18.:24:21.

Asia - how do you do it? It is really difficult. I have tried

:24:22.:24:27.

everything. The things I recommend - noise cancelling headphones. Yes,

:24:28.:24:33.

swear by them. It is a must have. That is the first thing. Lots of

:24:34.:24:39.

water while you are on the flight. Put your watch onto the new time

:24:40.:24:43.

zone immediately. Start thinking in the new time zone. But the main

:24:44.:24:48.

thing is, I cannot watch eight back-to-back movies, which is what

:24:49.:24:52.

you could do on one of these long haul flights. Get up and walk around

:24:53.:24:56.

if you can. Some of these lights, it is quite difficult to. But once you

:24:57.:25:01.

get there, I take melatonin, which is one of these, tells your brain

:25:02.:25:05.

that it is time to go to sleep. That is what I do. From our viewers...

:25:06.:25:11.

Don't fly direct, simple, says this one. But that makes your flight even

:25:12.:25:16.

longer. Someone suggesting, read a good book or two, or three or four

:25:17.:25:23.

or five. Another one, noise cancelling headphones, agreeing with

:25:24.:25:30.

Bronwen. Moving on to JP Morgan. This story is unbelievable.

:25:31.:25:35.

Washington Post, it is everywhere. Millions of customers' details. 10

:25:36.:25:41.

million, they are talking about. And setting up their own financial

:25:42.:25:43.

services firm and all sorts of things. Compare it to talk talk.

:25:44.:25:52.

150,000. 10 million, that is just huge. And just amazing that they

:25:53.:25:56.

could do it. Thank you, Bronwen. Good to have you on the show.

:25:57.:25:59.

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