25/04/2017 BBC Business Live

This is Business Live from BBC News with Rachel Horne

Focus on female economic empowerment.

from the world of business and politics gather in Berlin.

Live from London, that's our top story on Tuesday April 25th.

The event is known as W20 and will feature the likes of German

leader Angela Merkel and the boss of the IMF Christine Lagarde.

We'll be live in Berlin to find out what they hope to achieve.

It's being reported that French prosecutors are investigating

the maker of Peugeot and Citroen cars over suspected diesel

A strong open was pencilled for the European markets, continuing the

rally sparked by the presidential elections, they have delivered but

are they overconfident? We will discuss the matter.

Making sure you hire heroes, not zeroes.

We'll meet the man who says tech is the best way to vet new recruits.

As a whistle-blowing engineer wins $1 million for reporting a cruise

ship for dumping waste, we want to know, would the chance of the big

payoff make you more likely to blow the whistle? Let us no.

Some of the world's most powerful people from business and politics

It's part of an initiative called W20 set up by 20

So who's going and what's it all about?

Attending the summit will be Christine Lagarde -

the head of the IMF, Angela Merkel - the Chancellor

of Germany and Ivanka Trump, daughter and special assistant

to the President of the United States.

The group wants to highlight the issue of women's

economic participation and empowerment while reducing

the gender employment gap by 25% by 2025.

They've got a big task on their hands -

because if you just look at Britain as an example - out of the bosses

of the top 100 companies here - just seven are women.

And the World Economic Forum says that economic

inequalities between the sexes could take 170 years to close.

between men and women - according to WEF - is now larger

Let's go straight to Berlin, our owner Jenny Hill is there. Good to

see you, Jenny commie of God Angela Merkel and Kristin the guard, but

very powerful women, been in the light for a long time and it's

interesting because some may say that they haven't done enough to

reduce this gender it came back - pay gap. Now we've got Ivanka Trump

going there I wonder if she could invigorate these issues? Perhaps so.

There are suggestions that Ivanka Trump herself is committed to these

aims. It is worth pointing out that a powerful women like Christine

Lagarde and Angela Merkel have not been able to entirely progress this

issue while they have been in their positions, one wonders how easy it

will be for Ivanka Trump to do so. It is worth saying that Germany is

president of the G20 this year and has been looking at this issue. The

W 20 was set up in 2014 to address these issues. There's been a lot of

talk. You have to wonder how much has been done in that time. Germany

is led by a woman. There was a move last year, a law was passed which

means the 30 oh so companies registered here have to have a 30%

quota of women on their supervisory boards. I am told that has been by

and large mat is a voluntary code. Other moves are afoot, the families

Minister is keen to look at the issue of equal pay and so on. Are we

much further forward? Not really. Look at the aims of the W 20 and

there's been a great deal of talk, today, I am told that members of

various German women's organisations, having met many times

are due to present to Angela Merkel some ideas for heads of state and

demands about how to move forward. We must see what comes of that. As

you say Ivanka Trump is here. She is due to take part in a panel

discussion focused on female entrepreneurs and how they can best

be supported. Perhaps we will find out later what kind of key demands

the W 20 can make of heads of states around the world. Jenny, looking at

one of those issues we mentioned, saying that the gap in economic

opportunity between men and women is now larger than at any point since

2008, why is that? I'm guessing it is to do with financial crisis. My

understanding is that when it comes to women in the workplace is a

logjam at the top. They get to a certain point and then don't

progress which is why in Germany the focus has been on boardroom quotas

trying to get more women into higher managerial positions and if you

can't solve that it's hard for that to trickle down. The financial

crisis may have had an impact. It will be interesting to see what this

group of powerful women says today. The W 20 has been in existence for

three years or so. It will be interesting to see whether Angela

Merkel, who has herself come under fire for not doing more to progress

women's rights across the board, she's got four or five women

ministers in her Cabinet but she isn't really known for her female

friendly agenda. So it will be interesting to see what she comes

out with and whether Ivanka Trump can invigorate that discussion. Will

talk to you soon, thanks for the update. Do you know the pay gap

between CEO women and CEO men can be a difference of about 35%?

Outrageous. Let's take a look at some of

the other stories making the news. The French car firm PSA

Peugeot-Citroen is under investigation by French prosecutors

for cheating diesel emission tests, The Reuters and AFP news agencies

say they have been told by judicial sources that the company

is being investigated for breaking PSA says its vehicles have never

been fitted with software to let its diesel engines

deceive pollution tests. The founder of Wikipedia

is launching a service aimed Jimmy Wales says his new website

will provide politically neutral journalism with an agenda driven

by its readers. Wkitribune is intended to be both

ad-free and free-to-read, so will rely on supporters

making regular donations. General Motors has lost a legal bid

aimed at protecting it from lawsuits The US Supreme Court,

will not hear the carmaker's appeal, which argued that its 2009

bankruptcy protected The Supreme Court decision exposes

GM to potentially billions more damages over the switches,

which have been linked And Alitalia workers have rejected

a restructuring deal from the company's management

and unions to save the ailing carrier, according to

reports in Italian media. More than half of the employees

taking part in the vote rejected the deal, which involves 1,700 job

losses and a 8% salary cut. The government says that there

will be no alternative. So we could have more problems with

the carrier and possibly more strikes.

It might have been a strike at a shopping mall in Dubai when the

lights went out yesterday, did someone forget to pay the bill? One

of the largest shopping centres in the world was plunged into darkness

two hours. Shoppers were forced to use the screens of their

smartphones! To navigate their way at! I reckon they went on shopping.

That's the hard-core shoppers. When you are in Dubai you want to spend.

This Chinese liquor company which makes the popular grain spirit

Baijiu is toasting some impressive results.

Good to see you. Have you tasted this, it's a grain spirit. I know

you, I am sure you have drunk your share! You need a steel stomach to

drink Baijiu. It is very strong. I've only had it once or twice. It

will go down really easily for investors because they had good

profit numbers. To give you more background, the company that makes

National liquor company. It reported National liquor company. It reported

a 25% jump in that profit to $886 million for the first quarter. That

beat its own forecast. Because of those numbers we saw shares rallying

by more than 4%. This comes after a tough period for the company because

they were affected by China's anti-corruption crackdown. Basically

officials were not allowed to buy these $200 bottles of alcohol. Now

it seems it is doing just fine. Thank you.

Asian stocks hit an almost 2 year high overnight -

investors feeling more encouraged to take risks following the results

of the first round of the French presidential election.

On Wall Street, all three major indexes jumped more than 1 percent,

with the Nasdaq closing at a record high.

European markets were pencilled for a strong start -

yesterday France's CAC 40 jumped 4.1 percent to post its biggest one-day

gain in almost five years - with todays trade just 35 minutes

And we have the details about Wall Street.

America's number two wireless carrier AT, Coca-Cola, McDonald's,

Eli Lilly and the Pentagon's number one weapons supplier Lockheed

Martin, outside of earnings there's still a lot happening, including the

conference board that will be releasing its latest consumer

confidence index. Is expected to have dropped compared to the month

before, new numbers will show you that home sales slipped last month

and finally the chairman of the chief executive of Citigroup will

speak to shareholders and also take questions about the strategy at the

company's annual general meeting. Let's stay with the markets.

Joining us is Simon Derrick, Chief Markets Strategist,

Always good to see you. Let's kick off at this. I'm annoyed with the

markets because I think they are overdoing it with the French

election result. They are being so smug because they are going, you

know, this Macron a man is going to win, Marine Le Pen could not

possibly win. Well, Brexit, people couldn't leave the EU and Trump

couldn't be President! Last year we were hit by a lot of issues, the US

election, Brexit, the Italian referendum, so at the start of this

year, everyone will be on the sidelines. We won't know the issues

that are coming. By the end of the first quarter when things didn't

appear quite as bad, confidence came back and then they saw the story

yesterday and that was another little box ticked, one less thing to

worry about perhaps. A wall of money out there looking to invest and

looking for good returns. Are they being overly confident? Your point

is right. That was only the first round. And while the odds are

against Mr Macron losing, if he makes some kind of mistake along the

way of course things could go and from that perspective may be

investors are being overconfident but I think that's just the stories

since mid to late March that the confidence has come back and maybe

it is blinding people to some of the issues and there. About President

Trump, we are awaiting some tax announcements from him, some

investors hope it will cut corporation tax down, how likely is

it that he could get that through? He's certainly been talking about it

and the Treasury Secretary has been talking about tax changes and

markets would love it if he perched corporate tax rate down, no question

of it. The problems are that there are lots of fiscally conservative

Republicans there to get these points past. We will be hitting the

debt ceiling for you as borrowings of this is going to be an issue.

Remember how hard he found to get health reform through? This could be

the same story. If he does get through them the question is where

does the money come from because quite clearly whilst he's hoping

that it will be revenue positive over a decade, in the short term he

still has to borrow the money and that will push interest rates higher

in the US. Simon, thank you for your time. Short and sweet, we always

appreciate it! We will meet the man who says this type of computing is

the best way to vet potential recruits.

You're with Business Live from BBC News.

It's one of the biggest privately owned property

groups in the world has just published its annual results.

The Grosvenor Group, owned by the Duke of Westminster,

is one of the UK's largest property owners and made profits

Mark Preston is the CEO of the Grosvenor Group.

Mark, it is always good to have you with us. Thank you for coming in.

You're a good bellwether for the global property market. But let's

start with the UK. We hear mixed reports and you Brits love your

property prices, but we hear mixed reports about the UK property

market, it's up, it's down, it's going to be impacted by Brexit.

What's your take? As far as Grosvenor is concerned, our UK

business which is over half our global portfolio is concentrated

heavily on London so where a particular segment of the market,

but over the last year or two, it is not news that the market has been

cooling and in particular, on the upper end of the residential market

and we have quite a bit of exposure to that in London, it has been

cooling for a while and in particular with the rises in stamp

duty and the Brexit chilling effect last year, we have seen those

returns come down and we had anticipated that to a large degree

and sold quite a bit in anticipation of that in the UK to fund future

development projects in the UK and elsewhere over the next several

years. Let's talk about elsewhere. Globally, what's hot, what's not,

where are you going in or where are you leaving or getting out? We have

been investing overseas. The strategy of diversionification is

one that we have carried on. We are in North America and Asia and

Australia. We're well diversified and that's the deliberate policy of

ours. Have you been getting out of regions or countries around the

world? No, on the whole, we have been trying to enter new markets

tarking the view that by being more broadly spread over the long-term we

will balance out our returns. If you look at 2016, the UK results were

poor, but our overseas results were good and when flattered by the

depression of sterling last year, we came up with an overall return of 8%

which is pretty good. Mark Preston, thank you very much for joining us.

A story on Costa and their owner being punished by shareholders for

caution over consumer demand. Both of them seeing share prices falling.

Leading women from the worlds of business and politics

are gathering in Berlin to find ways of boosting female

Germany's Angela Merkel is attending as is IMF chief, Christine Lagarde.

The American first daughter is attending as well.

A quick look at how markets are faring.

We were expecting a strong start following on from the rally after

the French Presidential elections over the weekend and they're doing

well. Not up too high, but all in the green.

There isn't a business or organisation in the world that

doesn't have to get involved in recruitment at some stage.

So let's get the Inside Track on how to find the right people.

Many companies turn to the HR or human resources industry

which is worth around $453 billion worldwide according to

One reason it's growing is because of the apparent trend

for people to change jobs more frequently.

LinkedIn found US workers who graduated college between 2006

and 2010 averaged nearly three jobs in their first five years of work

compared to 1.6 for those who graduated 20 years earlier.

It means companies have more time consuming reference checks to do.

Australia based XRef says it has the answer

Lee-Martin Seymour is one of the men who came up with the idea

Lee Martin thank you very much for coming in this morning. Explain to

us how your company works and how it is dimp... More the dummies, me!

Well, if you think about the traditional process of collecting

references, it's done over the phone. It is an arduous process.

Many recruiters and HR directors just don't like doing it. It takes

days to collect feedback on potential candidates and when we are

short of skills we need tools like XRef to be able to reduce that time

to hire and help with things like attrition. Myself and the other

co-founder basically took the manual, arduous process, that's

existed for hundreds of years, and decided to awe mate it in the Cloud.

And what happens now is that the process is centred around the

candidate. So instead of an employer making phone calls over days to try

and collect this feedback, they simply go to XRef and they enter the

candidate details and in 15 seconds and that's their job done until they

collect the feedback back. The candidate adds the reference details

into the application and the referees then get an e-mail to give

that feedback back to the employer. Because we're constrained by time

here, you went public, you took the company public in 2011 to expand and

go overseas, but the companies that pay you the money, this is how you

make money, but they have been doing this for hundreds of years. You said

it yourself, so you have got to change that mentality for them to

rely on this new technology? Yeah, to correct you there. We listed at

the start of 2016. We started in 2011. We had five years and three of

those years were an education process. Pounding the pavement,

hitting the fond, trying to convince HR directors that the way they were

taking references in the traditional way wasn't helping with privacy,

discrimination, fraudulent references. It took us three years

to get to our first employee and then another two to get to five

employees. So it was a long mission to get to that point of going on to

the XRef. You're based in Australia. You have an office in London and

Toronto. It sounds like it's going well. You listed on the stock

market, 20 cents per share and you're at 50 cents. It hasn't been

easy sailing, has it in When you move from a local start-up, despite

the success we had in Australia, we knew that we had a repcable model.

XRef offers its clients huge return of investment. Our clients love

using the product because it takes away the thing that they really

don't like doing. But it knows no global bounds. So, you know, for us

as a team, as a family, at XRef seeing the growth over time is

fantastic. But I think it doesn't come without its challenges. And I

think sometimes you have to make the hard decisions and with listed on

the ASX, we needed a capital vehicle that would help us grow globally. We

knew we had a global product on our hands and you've got to go all in

and as we know, reward is directly proportionate to the amount of risk

that you're prepared to take and I think, you know, the first five

years we earnt our stripes and it was lovely to list as a product with

revenue, with clients with a successful part of the planet and

use the capital raised to progress globally. If you can come up with a

programme that can give, a 30 minute TV programme, an extra ten minutes,

we will abuy that one. Good luck with everything.

Here is how you can keep in touch with us.

The Business Live page is where you can stay

ahead of all the day's breaking business news.

We'll keep you up-to-date with all the latest details,

with insight and analysis from the BBC's team of editors

Get involved on the BBC business live web page, bbc.com/business,

on Twitter @BBCBusiness and you can find us on Facebook

Business Live on TV and online, whenever you need to know.

He's going to give us his insight into the business stories. We asked

you for your tweets after the story of the whistle-blower who exposed

Carnival Cruises for dumping oil into the sea and got $1 million.

Richard said he would do it. Nick said he would whistle blow for half

that amount of money. Lots of reaction. Thank you for those

tweets. The UK has a new whistle-blower regime. But it is

nothing as generous as in the US. This is a British engineer, he got

paid the money from the US fine. The US Coastguard went to the

coastguard. He takes home $1 million. They said he has no career?

No, he quit. He saw this going on. Took footage with his mobile phone

and quit as soon as the ship got into Southampton. He made money out

of it. Peugeot Citroen, could we have another Deysel-gate? They

supply to everybody. Everybody in the car industry. So always defied

belief that Volkswagen might be the only ones doing something about

emissions and tests that go back years and years and it is hard to

think that Volkswagen are the only ones affected. Peugeot and Citroen

say they have done nothing wrong. They don't use computer cheating

software, but they are under investigation by the French

authorities. You've left us with six seconds,

Dominic, what are we going to do? Cheers, mate. Bye-bye.

Hello. Wherever you started the day, it was marketedly