21/04/2016 World Business Report

years. He killed 77 people in a gun and bomb rampage in 2011. Those are

the latest headlines from BBC World News. Sally is here with World

Business Report. Story is the hardest word. Buses that Mitsubishi

will -- sorry is the hardest word. Mitsubishi bosses tried to clean up

the mess surrounding their emissions cheating scandal and Volkswagen does

the same in the United States. Welcome to World Business Report. It

is a packed programme today because we also have the likes of Microsoft

and Google revealing their latest earnings. We will be grilling a top

tech expert but let's start with investors in Japan who are waiting

in line to sell off more shares of the automaker Mitsubishi. In early

trade today, shares in the car giant were not able to trade at all as

they were about ten times -- there were about ten times as many sell

orders as there were bids. This is the press conference yesterday when

the boss and other owners had to it and -- admit that fuel data was

falsified for about 600,000 cars. This wiped $1.2 billion off their

market value on Wednesday. Today trade has been suspended. Let's go

to Rico Hizon in Singapore. Mitsubishi shares not able to trade

because they were just hit with a selloff limit straightaway? That's

right. Mitsubishi continues to be under fire. Many developments have

taken place over the past hour. Japan's top government spokesperson

has said that the automaker's manipulation of the test data was

extremely serious and this undermines consumer trust. There are

also reports that authorities overrated the research -- have

raided their research Centre, so it is really a bad day for Mitsubishi.

Nobody seems to be wanting to purchase the shares of the company

right now. The compensation bill may run into the hundreds of millions of

dollars but the damage could be far larger. This comes only months after

Volkswagen's issues and will add fuel to the view that auto

manufacturers are not behaving sensibly when it comes to emissions

tests. When it comes to car makers, trust in the brand is everything but

this may lead to increased regulatory supervision of the

industry. It is also a bad time to have the sector called into question

because new electronic options are Muslim their way to the car

industry. -- muscling. Staying on the subject, Volkswagen has to give

US authorities details on how it plans to fix the diesel cars sold in

the US equipped with pollution cheating software. They admit they

equipped up to 11 million diesel cars worldwide with devices that

cheated official emissions tests. If they don't reach a solution that is

acceptable to the environment protection agency in the US, the

case will go on trial and Volkswagen is counting the cost of this scandal

as they must also make provisions for potential liabilities in their

delayed results for last year which much be approved by Friday. Now we

go to our correspondent. Seven months ago, Volkswagen admitted that

up to 11 million of its diesel cars worldwide had been fitted with

software designed to distort the results of the emissions tests.

Since then in many regions that have been able to fix affected vehicles

quickly and without harming their performance. But in the United

States, where the problems first came to light as the company was in

the middle of a major marketing drive for diesel, it has yet to,

with a solution that regulators will except. That is partly because

diesel and emissions standards are very strict Tavare. The carmaker was

attending to -- there. The carmaker was attending to meet them but it

makes sorting out the problem very difficult. Among the options, it

could modify the cars to make sure they need standards in the future

but that could be difficult task for older cars. It could purchase the

affected cars back from their owners but analysts say that could cost up

to $4 billion. Or it could reach a deal with the authorities, paying a

fine to compensate for the extra pollution caused by its vehicles.

Whichever option is chosen, the court will have to approve it and

whatever happens is likely to cost Volkswagen a great deal of money.

Let's talk about technology. The world is vying for a share of the

Internet of things but not all the players are winning. Today we're

going to hear from Google and Microsoft who are unveiling

quarterly results in the United States. Last quarter, Google enjoyed

a growth in revenue at the parent company Alphabets by 18% but its

dominance is attracting attention of the European Union watchdog which

charged Google on Wednesday with abusing the dominant position of

android. This is another assault on the US tech giant that could lead to

large fines while Microsoft is continuing to grapple with the

rapidly declining personal computer market, focusing on the cloud

computing market. We have also heard from the chipmaker Intel, slashing

jobs globally. To talk us through all of this, I am joined by the

editor-in-chief of PC Pro. As we hear from all these companies who

have various arms across the technology world, you are sort of

getting a sense of which ones are losing as this technology develops.

Yes. We're seeing a massive trend that has been happening for a while

but is now reaching its peak. We are seeing PCs as the dominant form of

making money falling by the wayside and at the same time, not making so

much money from the phones anymore but from the ad sales that people

are doing on the phones. It is a major shift. Then we have a third

wave which is cloud computing and with it the Internet of things. And

what that means is that this is a completely new way of making money

that all these big companies, who traditionally relied on PCs, are

trying to get a slice of. As far as the European Commission is

concerned, Google is getting too big a slice of the action. Give us your

take on Wednesday's move. Again, this is the running cost of the far

as far as Google is concerned. It is always a threat. We know that the

European Union wants to attack the big players who are dominant and who

are using that position and Google is, is saying to the company, if you

want to have access to our services, you need to give people our browser

which is where the search results come in and the ad revenue. So it is

using its power. It will be interesting to see how that plays

off. Microsoft was there and they didn't win some years ago when it

was accused of the same thing. In terms of the earnings from the two

companies, what can we expect? We can expect Google to actually talk

about how it is going to concentrate on its cloud platform. It has fallen

behind the likes of Microsoft and Amazon in that area and this is

where there is a lot of money to be made. It will also talk about its

huge success stories, all that ad revenue coming in. And from

Microsoft I believe we will hear positive sounds because it has made

a lot of money from cloud already. Thank you. When we hear from the

companies we will update you. Shares in the owner of KFC and Pizza Hut

have jumped nearly 4% after the company reported

better-than-expected quarterly earnings in the US. Profits rose 8%

in the three months to March but the Chinese company remains tightlipped

about the progress of its local operations. Newmont Mining has

reported lower first-quarter earnings of the back of weaker gold

and copper prices. It is the second biggest gold miner by market value.

It is still ahead of expectations. The results were helped by higher

production and lower costs. Let's show you the markets briefly. Bear

in mind Mitsubishi shares are not trading today but Japan is having a

good session. The yen is much weaker today which has helped exporters in

general. We have a good the day in United States,, not particularly

strong by beating expectations. -- but. Expectations are fairly low

right now. I will see you soon to look at today's papers. Stay with

us. Almost to a half billion pounds of the extra money promised to the

health services to be used to help relieve the pressure