29/06/2017 World Business Report

Now it is time for World Business Report.

Will Rupert Murdoch's takeover plans for the pay TV giant be cleared

They saw off the speculators and the IMF, but 20 years

on from the Asian financial crisis, did Malaysia's risky strategy

In a minute we will have more on the markets,

and how they are reacting to rumours of higher interest rates.

We start with a big day for this man, media tycoon Rupert Murdoch.

He may be 86 years old, but his empire-building ambition

Today he finds out whether the UK Government will let him take over

pay TV giant Sky, or whether to order a full investigation.

Mr Murdoch's 21st Century Fox already owns 39% of Sky.

The price tag for full control - $15 billion.

Sky is one of Europe's biggest broadcasters,

The deal has already been cleared by countries across the region,

but some claim it would give Mr Murdoch too much control of media

It is not the first time he has tried to take over Sky.

His company News Corporation abandoned a bid in 2011,

following the phone-hacking scandal involving its newspapers.

This year a new scandal, sexual harassment allegations

at Fox News in the US, has led to calls for the latest deal

to be blocked by the UK regulator, Ofcom, something our media editor

Amol Rajan asked Mr Murdoch about when he caught up with him

From the BBC, are you worried about Ofcom? No. Are you worried about

Ofcom? Do you have any concerns about what Ofcom might say about

what is happening at Fox? None whatsoever? Fox News is getting

record ratings, so I am not worried at all. And you don't think Ofcom

will consider what is happening at Fox News? There is nothing happening

at Fox News. Nothing, OK? Samantha Tomaszczyk covers mergers

and acquisitions at Dealreporter. Is he going to get it, do you think?

What is the feeling about this particular deal? I think it is first

important to point out that because of the opacity of the process it has

been difficult to gauge. It be read both ways, the question of media put

plurality. It will be interesting to read the report and you brought up

the issue of fitness and propriety which has seen a lot of coverage in

the headlines about the sexual harassment case and the racial

discrimination cases at Fox. Our analysis shows that risk may have

been slightly overblown by the mainstream press that will be

interesting see how Ofcom deals with that. Are they, Kabul, the sexual

harassment allegations in the United States and here in 2011, the phone

hacking scandal, and the way in which the business is run, that it

was run unethically in terms of hacking phones in order to be able

to get stories, effectively. Is sexual harassment the same? Is it

something which you can assess fitness to run a company on? No, it

is not the same. I think firstly, as you point out, geographically there

are differences, issues with Fox, not with Sky. And the phone hacking

of Millie Dowler was so poisonous to the transaction at the time and that

has faded with time. From a deal point of view, why does he want to

do this? Why does he want to get Sky? There are several reasons, both

personal and business. He has tried to do the deal before, as we know,

and it is now possibly more important for him because the media

landscape is changing and there needs to be a combination of the

revenues from the entertainment business and also the news business.

Does it work into social media and other things like that, and the new

media, is it integral to that? It could be a reflection, because Sky

could do better with social media, getting its stories promoted on that

and working really online on its offering. You mentioned also that it

might be more personal than business driven. How much is personal, do you

think? Not more personal because he is a very smart man so it will be

done for business reasons of role. But because he has tried to do it

before, it is a long-term ambition and I think this time it will be

very difficult to walk away. Thank you very much indeed.

As we have been reporting all this week, it has been 20 years

since the financial crisis that swept through East Asia and wreaked

Today we are in Malaysia, which took a massive gamble

and brought in capital controls, effectively controlling how much

money went in and out of the country, rejecting help

from the IMF, and alienating the international financial

In the short term, this helped lessen the economic damage,

This company makes cranes and lifting equipment for industrial

Last year they opened the largest manufacturing facility in Southeast

A sign of confidence in future growth.

20 years ago its business ranked almost 70% in a matter of months.

This man was starting out in the family business in Malaysia

We were seeing first customers come back and saying we probably can't

take delivery, or we will take delivery but we cannot pay

In that year, '97, the damage when we looked at our books,

will always be in our memories as the worst ever.

But things looked very different at street level.

This man has run the store for 46 years and says he did not feel

the effects of the Asian financial crisis.

TRANSLATION: Business today is not as good as it was in 1997.

Then the Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, refused a bailout,

and in September 1998 implemented capital controls stopping offshore

It was a very frightening thing, to go against the whole world,

all of the great opinions of the great economies and all that,

it is not something that you do everyday.

But I found that there is no other way.

So it is a big risk, I know, but I had to take that risk.

As a result of our currency control, we recovered very quickly.

Now, if you ask around here, most people will tell

you that they didn't feel the effects of the Asian financial

But 20 years on there are some who say that Malaysia missed

a golden opportunity for reform which would have put it

This economist tells me capital controls sheltered Malaysia

from the worst of the IMF's austerity measures.

But it let the government continue with an economic policy favouring

the indigenous Malay population and allowed bail outs of ailing

All of this hurt Malaysia in the long run.

We did have a head start but the economy was growing much

faster than them, so after what happened to Malaysia.

A question as relevant today as it was two decades ago.

In other news: The biggest US banks have all passed the second,

tougher part of an annual stress test.

The approval by the Federal Reserve could give momentum to White House

The Fed has signed off on the firms' plans to distribute money

to shareholders rather than keep it as a buffer

Capital One, though, was ordered to resubmit its financial plans

India's cabinet has approved plans to privatise Air India.

The airline, which has debts of $8 billion,

has been struggling amid growing competition from low-cost rivals.

Privatisation plans have been abandoned before,

however, and unions have threatened wide-ranging protests if ministers

A quick look at the markets and see what they have been doing. The big

move, really, downward moves on all the European markets yesterday but

the big move was in currencies. We saw a weaker dollar but a stronger

euro and slightly stronger pound as well is that dollar weakening.

Don't forget you can get in touch with me and some

We will be seeing you in a short while to look at the