19/02/2018 BBC Business Live

This is Business Live from BBC News

with Jamie Robertson

and Sally Bundock.

Is the world's trading

system in crisis?

As China hits back at US plans

for more import tariffs,

a high-level UN meeting looks

for a way forward.

Live from London, that's our top

story on Monday 19th February.

President Trump says his

America First policy is aimed

at protecting US jobs and businesses

- but he could be on a collision

course with the Chinese.

Also in the programme...

Tackling the ageing population.

Singapore's Finance minister is

delivering a Budget expected to

raise taxes which will help pay for

health and social care of on the

markets, all fairly mixed, the FTSE

is down but European markets looking

fairly perky at the moment,

particularly in Spain, up two thirds

of a percent.

Planning a trip to Europe?

We'll meet the man says he can

streamline the experience,

courtesy of an app on your phone!

And as the Minister for Finance in

Singapore delivers his Budget, we

are asking, what is the best way to

pay for an ageing population? Do you

believe raising taxes is a good

idea? Get in touch.

Just use the hashtag #BBCBizLive.

Hello and welcome to Business Live.

Is the world's trading

system in crisis?

Since President Trump

entered the Oval Office

the world's biggest economy,

the United States, has been

reshaping its trading relationship

with the rest of the world.

Over the weekend, China threatened

to retaliate if the US went ahead

with proposed tariffs on steel

and aluminium imports.

So a high level UN-led meeting in

Geneva is looking at the way ahead.

In many parts of the world

the importance of multilateral trade

deals can be seen in the number

of people they've

lifted out of poverty.

The World Bank says the number

of people living in extreme poverty

has halved since 1990

because of free trade.

But President Trump has been

ringing the changes.

He pulled out of the Trans-Pacific

Partnership, which would have

covered about 40% of the world

economy, and is seeking major

changes to the Nafta free

deal between Mexico,

the US and Canada, which is worth

more than a trillion dollars a year.

Whilst President Trump says he's

trying to secure American jobs,

the US Chamber of Commerce says

41 million of them depend

on international trade.

But the relationships behind it

are showing signs of strain.

As I said, China is warning it

won't take US tariffs lying down.

Our correspondent Robin

Brant is in Shanghai.

Can you give us an idea of the kind

of reaction in China to these deals?

How serious are the statements that

they might retaliate by putting

their own tariffs on US imports?

Well, the reaction was quick and

sharp, they believe the analysis

carried out by the Department of, or

is and the conclusions reached are

groundless -- by the Department of

commerce. China is saying it

reserves the right to use the

necessary measures to defend what it

says are its rights. This is the

latest chapter in what started out

as a spat on the trading

relationship between United States

and China when Donald Trump moved

into the Oval Office but it is

beginning to look like it has the

potential to really be much more

serious, maybe even escalate to a

Craig Hall and believe me when you

talk to Americans here, American

businesses, American diplomats, the

last thing they want is a trade war

because they think no-one can win

out of that. What is interesting is

that the key thing for American

companies here in China, and

American companies seeking to do

business in China, is not so much

the concern about Chinese Government

and Chinese companies and how they

subsidise things like steel and

aluminium production, their solar

panel component production, but

their biggest concern is access to

the Chinese market, reciprocity, we

hear about that all the time, they

have big concerns about restrictions

placed on American corporations that

want to invest here, insistence on

technology transfer, insistent in

some sectors in going into joint

ventures with Chinese funds, that is

a much bigger concern for American

businesses looking to get into China

or expand in China. OK, Robin,

thanks very much indeed.

With me is Professor George Yip,

from Imperial College

London Business School.

You were listening in to that, are

you concerned about what was going

on over the weekend?

Yes, there

could be some kind of trade war, I

suspect the US will back down in the

end, both sides will pull back, but

it is right that American companies

are concerned about access to the

Chinese market because there are

many ways in which the Chinese

Government can make access

difficult, take away, impose

additional restrictions.

What seems

so extraordinary really, it is

ironic, perhaps, that China has

become this champion of free trade

at a time when America, which we

always thought was a champion of

free trade, has become, not exactly

protectionist but veering that way.

It is not as ironic as it seems. If

you look historically, the

economically most powerful countries

favour free trade because they have

the goods to sell so Britain in the

19th century first favoured and pass

laws for free trade and century it

was the United States, now in a

21st-century it is China because

they have so much to sell to the

rest of the world.

In the meantime

we have meetings going on like we

see in Geneva today with this UN

body coming together to try to talk

about how the global economy adjusts

to the environment we are in, and

looking at those countries that will

lose out the most it is the smaller

developing nations, whilst this bat

is going on between the likes of the

US and China?

Yes, multilateralism

favours smaller countries like

developing nations are you really

don't want to be caught, the

classic, when elephants fight the

ants get trampled on the grass.

If

there is some kind of trade war, how

seriously do you think it will

affect China? Because China has this

reach across the rest of the world,

doesn't it?

Yes, and China is

extending this reach all the way to

centralise and Europe but that said

China still sells more than it buys

from the rest of the world so it is

also vulnerable to a trade war.

I

was going to say, whether it will

pull Europe into this as well?

It

could do but the European Union has

very strong tariff barriers, free

trade within Europe but stronger

tariff barriers with the rest of the

world, as we are learning quickly

through Brexit.

And Europe is very

busy sorting out its own internal

issues like Brexit, that is very

time consuming for Europe

regardless. I think this is less of

a problem for Europe. Thanks for

your time, interesting. Obviously we

will keep you up to date with all of

the twists and turns on trade.

Let's take a look at some of

the other stories making the news...

The head of Latvia's Central Bank

has spent the night in custody.

Ilmars Rimsevics, who is also

a member of the European Central

Bank's governing council,

has been detained by Latvia's

anti-corruption agency,

but no details have been

released about why.

His home and offices at the Bank

of Latvia were both raided.

The Greek Finance Minister has told

the Financial Times that his country

won't need anymore close financial

supervision once the third tranche

of it's bailout comes

to an end in August.

It's worth more than $100 billion,

and progress on implementing

the economic reforms it requires

are top of the agenda for a meeting

of Eurozone finance ministers

in Brussels later on Monday.

We told you earlier there was a

Budget going on in Singapore, the

finance minister delivering it, the

2008 in Budget, in Parliament today.

The speech is two hours, apparently.

I don't know if he is on a breather

right now.

He is back on his feet!

It is quite a while! He has worn so

far that the country must prepare

for three major shift in the coming

decade, economy, ageing and

technology.

Mariko Oi is listening.

Yes, I have been refreshing the page

waiting for the announcements! What

economists have been anticipating

the possible hike in the goods and

services tax, their VAT, from 7% to

possibly up to eight or 10%, and

another thing that is possibly on

the cards is an introduction of

e-commerce tax, so at the moment

anything under $400 that you buy

online is exempt from that GST but

that might soon change. But he has

not announced either of them, he has

mentioned, though, the challenge of

the ageing population, and that is

one of the main reason is that even

though Singapore has quite a healthy

surplus, it still wants to raise

taxes because last year in 2017 the

Government spent about $10 billion

on health care and that is set to

rise to at least 13,000,000,020 20,

which is quite a hike. So I will

keep listening in to see if he

announces those hikes -- rise to at

least 13 billion in 2020.

Let's have a look at the markets.

The US dollar ending on... I

hesitate to call it a strong ending,

but it was a strong week for the US

market. S and P is always the best

want to look at rather than the Dow,

much more representative, 500 stocks

across the US economy.

The Australian market and Hang Seng

also. Hong Kong and China closed

today for New Year celebrations.

That was of course the end of last

week. So of course we will not have

those figures today. Let's go to

Wall Street and find out what is

going on there. I beg your pardon,

we cannot go to Wall Street! Sally,

takeover!

I am always the fallback!

Joining us is Lawrence Gosling,

editor-in-chief of Investment Week.

The reason we do not have Wall

Street is because they are closed

today?

Presidents Day, no action.

A

well-deserved day for the team

there. What are you watching today?

It is a funny day, half of Asia

closed, Wall Street not opening and

Europe trading in the middle

somewhere?

It is interesting, Wall

Street had a strong week last week,

the strongest for five or six years,

actually, and I think we are

gradually gathering ground from the

correction at the beginning of

February and I think we will see

more of that this week. Not a huge

amount of news around and I think it

is significant, with China, Hong

Kong and the US closed today, a

quiet day for markets, they won't

all be listening to the Singapore

Finance...

Long blood!

Recovering

from that two-hour speech, I guess!

-- a long lunch!

A big section of

the global market closing, talking

about Hong Kong as well, and five

years ago people would not have

worried too much, not worried, but

it would not have affected trade?

I

think you are right, there are two

major indices that investors can

trade Chinese equities which they

could not five years ago, there was

only one and it was not quite as

open. China as an economy, as we

were hearing earlier, has become

significant, second-largest in the

world, so the importance of China as

the stock market and economy has

moved on in measurably in the last

five years.

What are you watching

for the rest of this week? The start

of a new week, anything to keep an

eye open for?

We will be watching

what the currency does. A lot of the

results affected by exchange rates,

we have seen the dollar

strengthening a little bit, Stirling

drifting a bit, the euro is quite

steady so we will see more of that,

it does not feel like a week were a

lot will happen but I think there is

still some turbulence out there in

the markets. You cannot relax!

Not

for a moment! Lawrence cannot, he

has got to come back in 15 minutes

to talk about all sorts of other

stories!

We will be talking about

streamlining travel around Europe,

beating the man who saved his app

can simplify your holiday plans.

You are with Business Live from BBC

News.

Former shareholders in the collapsed

British construction giant,

Carillion, are calling

for its management

to be investigated.

Some have told MPs

that the company's

executives must have known,

or should have known,

about its cash flow problems,

well before it went

into liquidation last month.

Our business correspondent,

Joe Lynam, reports.

Carillion collapsed last month with

debts of almost £1 billion and a

pension black hole almost as large

again, today we heard from

Carillion's former biggest

shareholders, any of them got out

before it was too late, in letters

to MPs examining the collapse, one

fund manager said that they'll

should be an investigation, they

used to own 10% of Carillion.

Another big shareholder, standard

life Aberdeen, said management had

played down any potential risks. A

Canadian shareholder needed for

attempts to get a meeting with the

former chief executive of Carillion.

We have had a setup where people

working continued faithfully to

work, people on the bridge of the

company drawing their mega salaries

but those shareholders taking a

close look, as soon as they had a

look and a smell, they ran for the

hills and that was the warning sign.

None of the regulators seemed to be

aware of what was happening.

Anyone

left holding shares in Carillion

when it was liquidated lost all

their money, but thousands of former

employees lost their jobs and their

livelihoods.

On the businesslike page we have the

latest news as it breaks, including

shares slumping because of flat

earnings, flat earnings, this is the

household goods giant. Shares down

something like 3% this morning.

Making lots of goods that we are

familiar with, death toll, all sorts

of things. That is one of the

stories. -- Dettol. Billion pounds

sales for McColls, convenience

chain. Following its acquisition of

298 Co-op stores last year. Lots to

digests. On what is normally a quiet

start to the trading week, certainly

financial markets.

You're watching Business live.

Our top story:

it looks as if there could be

a showdown over global trade.

China is threatening to strike back

if America goes ahead with tariffs

on steel and aluminium.

A quick look at how

markets are faring.

London is up a little, as is Germany

and France, no big movements given

that Asian markets were closed.

Pound is stronger than the dollar,

weak dollar at the moment. Do you

want to start? Talking about global

tourism.

Global tourism is booming.

In fact, the number of trips

made by global travelers

surged 7% last year,

according to the UN

World Tourism Organisation.

And as this hunger to see the world

shows no sign of abating,

most travellers are becoming more

savvy, in an effort to make

their money travel further.

One man who is embracing

this is Naren Shaam,

the founder of GoEuro.

His app was set up in 2013 to try

and solve some of the problems

associated with travelling around

Europe,

helping users to navigate

different languages, travel tickets,

companies and routes.

One man who is embracing

this is Naren Shaam,

the founder of GoEuro.

His app was set up in 2013 to try

and solve some of the problems

associated with travelling around

Europe,

helping users to navigate

different languages, travel tickets,

companies and routes.

GoEuro operates in 12

countries in Europe,

serving around 80,000 rail and bus

stations and over 3,000 airports ...

Today, the company has grown to 250

people in its Berlin headquarters,

and has raised almost

$150 million in funding.

The founder of GoEuro,

Naren Shaam, joins us now.

The both of us have been playing

with the website. We have both had a

go, and we struggle with it a little

bit, it kept pinging me to

Booking.com.

We are starting a new

partnership, so you hit on an edge

case, we try to bring all trans

built in Europe together, operating

in 12 countries. -- all transport.

We have partners built in, what we

try to do is bring all of this

inventory online, makes it easily

bookable.

What strikes me is

extraordinary, something people are

not aware of, fragmentation of the

European travel market, we think of

Europe as a single market, people

talk about the single market, it is

not yet, it is not in travel, can

you explain it to us.

That is the

purpose of me founding this company,

if you look at other industries,

Netflix, you stream almost all

movies in Netflix, when you want to

order, Amazon, song, Spotify,

travel... Ten different websites.

Airline websites, trained is mostly

state owned in most countries, you

work on the kiosk at the station or

national rail. Coaches are extremely

fragmented, thousands of companies.

All of this has never come together

on a single platform, when you type

in the destination and the platform

tells you what is the best way,

whether it is a simple route like

London Amsterdam or London Paris.

You are trying to solve that

problem, trying to get across all

the bus services, sounds like a

mammoth task, 250 people on it at

the moment, how will you be making

enough money to run yourself as a

viable business, I know that you

have a lot of funding, but that will

run out quickly?

We have a long

runway with the funding, most of the

revenue we generate today is 90%

plus of the revenue comes from

partners, so we charge a commission

for every ticket that we sell. The

bus company, the rail companies, the

airlines, etc, that is 90% of the

revenues, the remaining 10%,

partnerships, advertising deals,

etc.

What about negotiating a trip

across Europe through a different

sort of travel mode, a new regime.

Your website, your system, how does

it work it out, do you have an

algorithm, from one place to

another, or people negotiating the

way in which you travel, going from

one plane to another?

Very complex

network of suppliers, that we are

trying to stitch together, it

happens in phases, the first phase

for us is to bring all the supplier

online, so you can actually book

everything on your app, 70% of

consumers are mobile, most of the

consumer journeys happen on what we

call simply journeys, a choice

between London and Paris, you can

take a coach or a train or a flight,

and as we, as we, and this is

negotiated by our business

development team so in each of the

countries we have people...

That is

a human being doing that.

That is

correct, brings the supply online,

100 bus, 50 plus engineers bringing

it together and making it simpler.

The second part, which we are

starting to build, how do you stitch

these together, taking a flight plus

a train, cross-border, maybe

multiple trains, very complex

journeys, not easily possible by

humans. This is done by algorithm.

We were testing it in Spain and

rolling it out across other markets.

We will keep a close eye, he in

particular likes... I have got to go

to Budapest, June. No, August. I

think that we are going to fly,

probably Vienna, and then train.

Much cheaper to go Vienna, and then

train. The view out the window is

much better.

Very cheap option, yes.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for

having me.

The British chocolate firm

Cadbury's was founded two

centuries ago by a Quaker,

John Cadbury, who was famous

for his kindness to his worker.

But when international

food and drink giant

Mondelez took over the firm,

it had to make mass redundancies

to keep it in business.

So what's the secret

of delivering bad news

like that without ruining

the company's reputation?

That job fell to Glenn Caton,

Mondelez President

for Northern Europe.

Got to make difficult decisions for

the long-term good of the business

but how you do it in partnership

with employees is equally important.

One of our problems was that the

cost of manufacturing in Bournville

was three times as much as it was in

a comparator plant in Germany. The

three things we did, first,

communicate the need for change,

second, compelling vision of the

future, and the third, how we went

about it, consulting with employees

to make sure they were part of the

process and all the redundancies

were voluntary, none of them were

compulsory. If we had not done it in

the right way, in the short term,

could have resulted in strike

action, it is better for employees

and the business, if you do things

in collaboration and trust and

respect people, they will trust you

and respect you back, and they will

give you more.

We were just having a

look... We were having a laugh...

He is the president of northern

Europe Mondelez, not the president

of northern Europe! And his name is

not Mondelez, that is the name of

his company. Lawrence is back,

Lawrence Gosling, very simple, very

easy. Going through the newspapers.

I think that this is really

interesting. In the news, as it

were, Saudi women allowed to start

business without male position. --

permission. Saudi Arabia changing

their laws, there are regulations,

empowering women in more and more

ways.

Vision 2020 is designed to for

women to have a greater part in

Saudi society, so I guess in a way

that we would think of in a western

country, a new more liberal leader

in Saudi Arabia. Fields ironic,

seeing this headline, in western

newspapers... Women allowed to do

things...

They can drive cars, go to

a football stadium, start a business

without a man giving them permission

to do so. Is... Overnight it is

doubling the size of the human

resource, could be the most

extraordinary economic effect.

The

one thing they have recognised, they

need to shift the economy away from

the old oil based economy toward

something more diverse, if they are

not tapping into 50% of their talent

in women, they will not achieve

that.

Lots of reports have come in

from the World Economic Forum, the

World Bank, they show that if you

have more women in the workforce,

you increase GDP growth,

significantly, I don't have the

statistics.

And there is a strong

history of women only universities,

so it is a highly educated female

workforce coming into the economy in

the next

couple of years.

Thank you very

much. That is all that we have time

for. Thank