15/03/2016 BBC Business Live

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

Japan's central bank holds fire on further stimulus -

but what's left to do to boost its slowing economy?

Live from London, that's our top story on Tuesday 15th March.

Japan's Central bank holds fire on further stimulus and gives

a bleaker view of the future - so how will it boost

Music to Sony's ears; the entertainment giant buys part

of pop legend Michael Jackson's music empire with lucrative rights

share markets are under pressure with the price of oil remaining

below 40 dollars a barrel, we'll talk you through

And predicting the future, we'll get the inside track from one

entrepreneur who says she can tell business what the future holds

by taking the guess work out of forecasting.

The global cosmetics firm moves its headquarters

But is it a vote of confidence in the country despite

Let us know, use the hashtag, BBC Biz Live.

It's the big week for central banks in our major economies;

Japan, the US and UK are among the five laying out rates decisions.

Today, the Bank of Japan held fire on lowering rates

The BoJ gave a bleaker view of the economy,

raising questions about how effective its policies are.

In January Japan made the surprise move of diving into negative

That was to spur bank lending and consumer spending.

Other central banks have followed suit.

Only last week, the European Central Bank cut interest rates

and unleashed quantitative easing to kick-start

Joining us is Dr Pippa Malmgren, founder of London-based economic

Nice to see you. Sally running through the

details there of the policy action we have seen so far from many of the

Central Banks but we are getting to the point where they are running out

of options? That is the point of going into negative interest rates.

It's a last-ditch effort to compel people to stop saving and to take

their capital and go put it to work in the economy.

But why is it not working to the same extent they might have hoped?

The Bank of Japan held off taking further action, they are keen to let

the first round of action settle down a little bit, but it's not

working in quite the way they might have expected? No, in fact we have

record sales of safes in Japan now because if you put your money in the

bank you have to pay the bank for holding your cash, that's a negative

interest rate. That's exactly what they don't want.

They want people to put their capital into the real economy one

way or another. The other thing is, you have to understand the purpose

of negative interest rates is to raise the cost-of-living. It's to

cause inflation to rise. It should make the price of assets like homes

or the stock market go up. So another thing is, people start to

think, well, if that's true, I need to save even more, so it's a

circular problem. Let's zoom out a little bit. In

terms of the options that are available to Central Banks, this is

one of them. We have seen record interest rates and other policy

action. Are there any moves they still have up their sleeve or, is

this really the last-ditch attempt to kick start what we have seen,

sluggish recoveries, in some cases teetering on the edge of recession

again, and they are really trying to find something else they can

deploy but they are running out of ways to do that? I'll tell you

what's left. They could start buying things

in the open market, they could buy debt, they could buy corporate debt,

they could put the money into things like infrastructure. But Central

Banks are very reluctant to become price-makers,

they prefer to create the conditions. So the question is, if

the public doesn't take the money and push it into the real economy,

how will Central Banks make them do it? One of the ways, is, you go to

electronic cash, you dock somebody's bank deposit, if I put ?100 in the

bank, that takes ?2 out, that'll make me get my money out of there.

Many suggest it's storing up problems for labour down the

line. Lovely to see you A worker sacked by Volkswagen

in the US has launched legal action He's accusing it of deleting

documents and obstructing justice in relation to the

emissions scandal. Daniel Donovan, who worked

in IT for the company, says he refused to delete the files

and reported them to a supervisor. He says he was wrongfully

dismissed in December. The head of Bangladesh's central

bank has resigned after hackers The money was stolen last

month from its account at the Federal Reserve

Bank in New York. Last week bank officials say

the gang behind the raid used stolen credentials to make

the transfer requests. Initially some money

was recovered from Sri Lanka, but more than eighty million dollars

was laundered through casinos Oil prices have fallen nearly 3%,

trading under $40 a barrel after Iran put off plans

to join countries proposing Iran's oil minister says the country

will only join discussions to cap output after its own production

reaches a pre-sanctions levels. A lot of data on our website.

Just to highlight on there, we had news from France, consumer

prices falling. The live page pointing out, more deflation over in

France, consumer prices confirmed by falling % year on year. So that

problem of deflation continues to stalk the eurozone.

Also, this is the copper company Antofagasta, 83% fall in annual

profits mainly down to the fall in the price of copper and slowing

growth in China, becoming a real theme. The other mining companies

out with news prior to this BH Bilton

Rio Tinto, also having to take steps. The price of metals going

down and the slowing economy in China. Full details on the website.

As Sony snaps up Michael Jackson's interest in a massive music catalog

Leisha Chi is in Singapore and has more for us.

I didn't realise Michael Jackson had the rights to so many songs? Neither

did I, but we have to go all the way back to

1995 when Michael Jackson partnered with Sony to set up

the world's biggest music publisher. They split the business and Sony is

now paying $750 for Jackson's 50% holding, so now they are going to

own the rites to about three million songs. This includes most of the

works by The Beatles, as well as sales by Bob Dylan, Lady Gaga, Kanye

West and Taylor swift. The deal does not include Michael Jackson's master

recordings or the songs written by him, but essentially this deal shows

he wasn't just the King of Pop, he made one of the smartest investments

by investing in the titles and, importantly, the sale is going to

help reduce his estate's debts and he still has three living children

and they'll get more financial flexibility from the money that's

going to come in. It's been seven years since Michael Jackson left us

but he's still ranked amongst the highest

earning deceased celebrities. Coke owe had a downbeat day

yesterday. The -- Tokyo.

Export goods become more expensive, down in

Hong Kong adds well, well street the night before. -- as well.

The European numbers now: Sainsbury's as well, its shares down

1%. The spark retailer in the UK coming out with disappointed numbers

as well. Losses across-the-board, oil prices

and energy stocks lower. A familiar tale. Michelle is here to tell us

what we should be watching. Wall Street will have plenty of economic

data to digest as the Federal Reserve begins a two-day meeting on

interest rate policy. The retail sector generally has been a bright

spot as the world's largest economy has recovered. American consumers

have opened their wallets. Spending surged in January. Investors will be

watching the commerce department's retail sales figures to find out if

that momentum carried over into February or if it stalled. Valiant

pharmaceuticals get its chance to respond to its detractors. The

embattled drug-maker releases its fourth quarter results.

It's been under scrutiny for accounting

and business practices. And the US Senate

is holding a hearing into driverless cars with testimony expected from

the likes of Google, Lift and others.

Joining us is Maike Currie, investment director at Fidelity

Let us turn our aFengs to oil. Japan isn't going to take part in this

freeze. -- attention to oil. A lot of concern about whether Iran would

join that group and it's not doing so yet? That is right. The sanctions

have been going on for so long. The equity markets keep moving in step

with oil price. That is one to keep an aye on. Markets washing the Fed

now. We have had the Bank of Japan, the next one to make decisions,

makes key economy Federal Reserve, again nothing expected this time?

Central Bank policy never far from the Spotlight. This week we have got

five Central Banks announcing policy and out of those, the Fed is

arguably the most important. There is the press conference and it will

all be carefully dissected. We could see the next move up in the next

June meeting but nothing at this one.

A quick word on the budget hear in the UK. We'll get details from the

Chancellor, the Finance Minister tomorrow. Fuel - details about that

today, transport spending, all of that being leaked ahead of the

budget but clearly a big balancing act for the Chancellor to play?

Yes. The Chancellor is walking a tightrope. Back in the Autumn

Statement in November, he was very bullish, he said the UK economy was

looking a lot stronger, there was ?27 billion

extra in the Kitty, now there's a black hole of ?4 billion because the

economy's shrank and George Osborne's really made himself a

hostage to fortune. He needs to pull a show-stopper of a budget and

wrestle back the Spotlight from his political opponent, Boris Johnson.

The question is, can he afford it One we'll all be watching very

closely tomorrow. Thank you. See you later.

Still to come, predicting the future - we meet the software entrepreneur

who's taking the guessing out of business forecasting.

You're with Business Live from BBC News.

Cross-channel rail operator Eurostar has just announced

The firm runs services between London, Paris and Brussels.

But it was badly hit by the terrorist attacks in Paris

Profit last year fell to ?34 million, that's down

Nicholas Petrovic is the chief executive of Eurostar,

and I put it to him that it had been a difficult year.

An unusual year. Everything went in different directions. There was a

migrant issue. There was also some good news. The big thing for us, we

had a new fleet of trains at the end of last year. That is the future of

Eurostar. So a very, very eventful year actually for us. An eventful

year and one in which passenger numbers were flat. You are operating

profits down by ?20 million, so a lot going on. But what are you

thinking for 2016, how is it going to look because the migration crisis

is difficult to predict and it's very hard to counter it really,

there's not much you can do about that? There is been a lot of

investment. For 2016, I'm quite actually optimistic. I think with

the new fleet of train and there is an appetite of people to travel and

I think we are expecting to grow. The summer looks

good at the moment, bookings are very strong, so we expect, after the

effect of the Paris attacks, now to grow again and to have a very good

2016. We saw footage of the fancy trains,

running between Paris and London currently, but you are going to

expand that significantly which which would be costly I would

imagine? We are investing ?1 billion into the float to complete it. This

year it will be mostly on the Paris route, so most trains will be new.

We have more space, Wi-Fi on board, plugs, everything. And then we move

that to the Brussels route and other routes, to the South of France.

Putting on the brakes - Japan's central bank holds fire

on rate cuts and stimulus but gives us a bleaker view of this major

Japan's already in negative interest rate territory -

so will this mean a fresh dose of stimulus down the line to nurse

The next company offers something we could all do with -

it works out exactly where you stand financially,

I am talking of the start-up CrunchBoards.

Its software lets companies to work out their financially situation -

who owes what and whether they're in a position to expand or hire.

The UK based company is relatively new -

it launched just two years ago - but now has offices in London,

CrunchBoards now has over 8,500 customers in over 82 countries.

It's the brainchild of entrepreneurs Hannah McIntyre and Amy Harris.

With us now is one of the duo, Hannah McIntyre.

Hannah, nice to see you. We touched on it briefly, it is trying to get

businesses more information about themselves. It sounds a bit obvious

that these are the things that firms should know, how much money they

have, where rents how they can spend it but, crucially, they don't? Often

this is the case. CrunchBoards is about driving business growth. Most

businesses are sat in a meeting with their accountant at the end of the

year having a history lesson, but what you want to see is where you

will be in the next three, six, 12 months, five years, then build upon

your foundations. This started because you and Amy were running a

company prior to CrunchBoards and you needed this service? Yes, and it

is pretty extreme to build your own software because you cannot find

something to the illiterate you need, but we

did. We had a company looking at incident management accounts for the

hospitality sector, we realised we needed this. We were spending lots

of time exporting data, putting it into the dreaded spreadsheets, there

were lots of inefficiencies and we were always running at a massive

time like. All the time, you need to have answers today, that is what

CrunchBoards does. We spent a lot of time talking about uncertainty,

weather it is the referendum, the oil prices, China. You can see the

need for some planning, but how do you navigate that? There is knows

urge think as a certain future. Scenario planning is really key. --

there is no such thing. There is no fixed feature for any company. You

need to be able to test different options, that is what the software

does. It has helped small businesses to explore opportunity. This does

not altogether remove the accountant, it works alongside that?

Absolutely. There is an interesting shift in the accounting industry.

Traditionally it has been compliance based, tax etc has been looked at.

But is there a shift towards advisory services? Small businesses

want expertise and knowledge to help them grow. What we do is facilitate

collaboration between adviser and the client, so that the time spent

is not this history lesson looking back at last year, it is hopefully

monthly meetings etc looking towards the future. Many watching this

looking at you, you and Amy, you are both really good friends and

starting businesses together. It is amazing, we still are really good

friends! If you are watching, Amy, it is official. Many might be

watching you, thinking, well, you are operating in 80 countries, how

do you make that happen? We do not sleep a lot, I should say that. It

has been a process. We did not launch with 82 countries and a huge

amount of learning has happened. We launched in Australia, lots of

people would say, why have you done that? That it is the emerging market

for cloud accountancy technology in the world so it was the obvious

place. And then, this growth has happened and we have not really done

much marketing either. It has been amazing. There is validation in the

marketplace. It was not just us that needed that solution, clearly others

did, too. A quick word on the technology that lets this happen,

like lots of technology firms that is the software that makes it more

accessible, and you can do that right here? Absolutely, we are based

in the clouds we are accessible in any device anywhere in the globe. As

long as you have an Internet connection, of course! We work

really, really hard to make sure it is as accessible as possible. And

secure, presumably? Absolutely, any cloud business has to take that

incredibly seriously. We're working very hard to make sure that is case.

Really nice to see you, Hannah, thank you for coming in.

I am definitely not inputting any of my numbers! I know it is easy but it

would reveal all sorts of nasty things I do not want to know!

Innovations in the financial world are swift.

Take banking apps, which millions of us use.

In fact, the UK's Royal Bank of Scotland is replacing hundreds

of staff with so called robo advisers!

But what are they and can they really do better

Don't worry, you won't have to see a scary chap like him,

you won't even have to see a human being.

In fact, you can get everything you need from a mobile phone app.

There's a list of questions that help us to understand as much

as we can the risk attitude and risk profile of our clients.

One company that recently entered the UK market is the Italian firm

MoneyFarm, it uses robo advice rather than a human personal

financial adviser to help its customers make investment

decisions in a variety of markets taking

With this technology you can build a different way to explain

And the robo concept comes from the fact there is no need...

At least it's not mandatory to have someone interfacing

with the clients, the computer or the app

on the mobile phone can help you do so.

Lets take a quick look at the stories making business

The Wall Street Journal reports that the cosmetics company Avon

plans to move its headquarters to Britain and cut 2,500 jobs

worldwide as part of a turnaround plan.

That is also elsewhere in the financial press and we will talk

about it in a moment. The Daily Telegraph warns that

global recession risk rises to 30% this year, according

to Morgan Stanley. And in the Gulf News,

Kuwait looks set to impose a 10% tax They are looking to claw in more

money with the price of oil going down. Maike from Fidelity

International is back to talk about the papers. Avon is really

interesting, any time that we are told that the Brexit debate will

cause uncertainty and firms to leave the UK, Avon is moving headquarters

from New York to the UK, it is not worried? Avon has much bigger

worries than the EU referendum and Brexit. Its direct selling market is

struggling in an age where everything is set -- technology

driven and it needs to come are swift e-commerce rivals -- compete

with. Its commission -based model is struggling. Also the name? The Avon

lady is calling, even you are familiar with, growing up in South

Africa, it was a big deal in the UK. It is the issue of rant? It is a

very good example of how digital disruption can disrupt all business

models and you really need to keep up with the times. The other thing

about Avon, they were dead set on keeping the business in the US,

where the route 's worth. When they have been pressed to expand into

emerging markets. I think they missed a trick. Turning our

attention to collate, like many big oil producers it is feeling the

effects of a falling oil price. -- let's turn our attention to Kuwait.

It is imposing a 10% tax. The Gulf is known for being tax-free and it

attracts many people to move there. These oil producing nations need to

diversify revenue sources. A major change for the Gulf countries. A

similar story in Saudi Arabia not so long ago, increasing taxes. It is

very interesting how the price of commodities going on is forcing

countries to take steps they really do not want to take.

This is a story in the Telegraph, the global recession risk rises to

30%, according to Morgan Stanley, not least, for many countries,

because of falling oil prices. That has been the big worry. We were

expecting the low oil price to feed through to consumers. We have not

seen that will stop we expect this year to be different. We seek US and

EU consumers who use a lot of oil benefiting, I think it will trickle

through. We have seen a lot of warnings, we should be careful not

to manufacture a crisis. That is something we will watch very

closely, we will not manufacture a crisis. Nice to see you, as always,

Maike