Soon. In the fast lane, aston martin plans a fiveyear trade and investment drive in china worth over 600 Million Pounds. We will speak to the ceo, next. We are less than a halfhour from the start of european trading. Take a look at futures right now. We are seeing gains across the board on the major indexes with the exception of the ibex sorry, the ftse mib and stockholm. Here on the board, ftse futures gaining 0. 4 , dax futures up 0. 5 . Lets start with some of the earnings this morning. Roche expects sales growth to slow this year. It is counting on new drugs in the pipeline to offset revenue losses in its oncology medicine. Joining us from switzerland, the ceo of roche. Welcome to the program. Thanks for joining us. About 2018 as kind of the year of the cliff edge for drugmakers, for roche especially. How well do you think these new drugs in things like hemophilia are going to offset the loss of your cancer drugs . Im very confident. If you look at the growth in 2017, the vast majority of growth, over two thirds of the growth, stems from recently launched medicines. We will see these medicines continue to grow into 2018. This will allow us to compensate. Matt in hemophilia, theres a renewed interest in the industry. ,anofi, with the acquisition definitely shows that. Do you view that transaction as possibly a threat . Term, it always depends on the quality of the clinical data. For now, we are confident about the potential. This is the first treatment after 20 years which will fundamentally reset the standard of care, how patients in hemophilia will be treated, a significant reduction, much more convenient administration. It has now been approved in the United States. At the end of last year, we got it will be approved soon in europe. We are very bullish about the potential. Matt you mentioned the u. S. We recently saw this teaming up between amazon Ceo Jeff Bezos as well as jamie dimon and others to try to enter the health care industry, lower prices. Theyve transformed industries before amazon. How do you think this is going to change the landscape . Concerned,s roche is we are focused on innovative medicine. Exposed to less price pressure due to the demand by physicians and patients for our medicines. I would not see any change in the dynamics and the fundamentals for our u. S. Business Going Forward. Matt having just moved from the u. S. To europe, it is clear to me that drug prices are so much higher in america for the same products. Think is the main reason for that . Is it fda approval that is the problem . If you look at the timelines, ahead. Ly the fda is even other Health Care Authorities around the world are catching up with the fda. Initiatives ofhe the fda to further accelerate approval timelines. That is the benefit of patients who will receive such innovative medicines at the earlier stage. And of course it helps us to develop our business. See very good support of the fda, in the interest of patients, but also helping us as an industry. Matt we talked about other Companies Making targeted acquisitions. You made a targeted deal. Do you see any more acquisitions like that, and if so, which directions are you looking . We will continue to look for opportunities, products which , like anranchises acquisition in the oncology space, or technologies. M a strategy as such. Continued look out for opportunities. Matt thanks for your time. Really appreciate it. Severin schwan, roche ceo, on earnings day. Lets get to another industry leader. Prime minister theresa may arrived in china yesterday, leading the largest business delegation her government has taken overseas, 50 Business Leaders from sectors including Financial Services, health care, energy, and motors. The luxury carmaker has announced a deal worth about 600 Million Pounds. Joining us from beijing is andy palmer, the ceo of aston martin. Talk to me first about this deal with china. What does it mean for Aston Martins growth . Big Growth Engine for us, particularly within the next year or so. Suv,ll be introducing an and that is a big part of our growth strategy. Grew almostear 100 . We wanted to continue that momentum. We want to invest in this market. Announced 620 Million Pounds of trade and investment. You aboutme ask theresa mays visit and how that is going. How do you see the politics of this playing out . How do you see the Prime Minister doing there . She appears to be doing well from what i can see, reading the body language and listening to the speeches. World, one hast some trade relations with countries other than the e. U. Block. It is going to be very important to the u. K. , and the more places we can have free trade with, the better for us. I assume that cuts both ways. We are still part of the e. U. As the united kingdom, but theresa foris readying the country i guess one of the possible scenarios, which is basically the opportunity to make trade deals with places like the United States, china, and other places. She certainly working hard at it. , it seems to be going quite well. Matt im assuming that brexit wont affect aston martin as much as a bespoke carmaker in britain. People are going to want those cars. The china deal, i figure, may affect your business. Will you have to build an suv and focus more on electric cars for china . The answer is yes to both of those, based upon chinese regulation and chinese taste. Why we do very well as aston martin in china with sports cars, it is not a very big sports car market. We are close to being market leader. As you see, it is not a huge market. That transforms when you talk about suvs. That is a much bigger market. Still a developing market because luxury suvs are relatively immature as a product. When you talk about electric cars, this is a market that is really leading the world, and from the point of view of taxation, public interest, it is going to be important in the future to have an electric offering. In that context, aston will bring its First Electric car to market in 2019. Matt and could become the tesla killer. Aston martin can be a competitor to that company. You are already a competitor to ferrari. I mentioned those companies because they have incredibly high valuations. Isnt now the time to strike . Dont you want to get your ipo done now while the market is valuing these companies at 20 times earnings and more . I do agree that if you wanted to make a comparison around aston martin, you picked two of the three great proxies. I would add hermes as the Third Company that one should look at when you talk about ultraluxury. Tesla, that is, a good trilogy by which to compare us. For me, im concentrated on creating value in the company. Youve seen in our quarterly results, weve gone four quarters in a row with profitability, and very shortly we will be announcing fullyear results. The question of float, dont float, stay within the private as the manager of the business, i would certainly be fully involved in wherever that goes. That is really for the shareholders to decide. Matt thanks for your time. Look forward to seeing you in geneva in march. Aston martin ceo andy palmer joining us from beijing. Europes Biggest Oil Company has delivered fourthquarter earnings ahead of estimates. Shell reported adjusted profit of 4. 3 billion. Best profit in three years. Lets speak to the ceo of shell, ben van beurden. He joins us for his first interview of the day. A profit beat. Andme ask what led to this if you see those positive tailwinds Going Forward. Good morning, matt. Year,k it is a very good very good quarter. Basically, we saw improvements in all our main businesses. Altogether, the year has been transformative. Earnings close to 16 billion. I think we have shown that we have what it takes to be a worldclass investment case. We have been able to pay down our debt quite a bit. Im very confident that we can meet the commitments, the promises that we made for the end of the decade. Why the weaker than expected from the market cash flow generation, especially at 77 a barrel . And analyst says this could temper hopes for a buyback program. How do you answer to that . Ben we have some seasonality. It is not abnormal for our q4 to have some specials in it. You have to bear in mind that the runoff in oil price also results in a revaluation. If you add back the working capital changes, you get to about 8. 4 billion of cash in the quarter. The other thing that happened this quarter is that we paid significantly higher taxes. Part of it is because we made more profits, but also we had some one else in the context of settlements, etc. , which is good news, but nevertheless a higher cash tax bill. If you look at the differences between this quarter and last billioneres about 1. 6 more tax payments in this quarter. If you add that back, it is a very Strong Quarter from a cash perspective as well. Matt can you quantify the effects of the u. S. Tax reform bill . First of all, we have an taxct on the deferred assets on our balance sheet. As a result of that, we had to take an adjustment on our deferred tax assets. To our earnings. Going forward, it is very positive. The United States is the single biggest investment destination for the next few years. We are very well exposed to the United States. That investment is going to be doing well in a more advantageous tax environment. For us, there is a very significant upside. Matt let me ask you about the future of shell. You are already calling it a gas and oil company after the century of big oil. What is the next iteration of shell . Is it a technology company, a power company, a chemicals company, how do you see it . Ben why not all of the above . Shifted years, we have from an oilbased portfolio to a gasbased portfolio. On multiple measures, gas is bigger than oil. Of course we are more than oil and gas. We have a well performing and growing Chemicals Business. We see chemicals as a very advantaged segment. We are going to double our Chemicals Business in the next few years. Seeuld imagine that we will continued focus on doing so. Also, there is a Massive Energy transition on the way. What we have said, we are going to focus significantly more on what we call new energies. That is basically focusing on new types of fuels. Also focusing more on power. You have seen us making the initial moves in the last quarter. We are going to build up another value chain. We will have a much more future proofed portfolio, basically accessing brands that we are currently not accessing enough. We think the power of business is going to be the fastestgrowing segment and we need to be part of that as well. Matt when you talk about accessing, the head of bp says the world cannot produce all the remaining barrels of oil. Do you agree . Do you think your company is holding some stranded assets, so to speak . I dont think we hold stranded assets. I think the whole argument assets are those part of the resources that we keep on our Balance Sheets as reserves. Publish another report, which is going to demonstrate within the next 10 an assetso, we have base that is financially resilient. I dont see that things are going to play out to the extent that we have to take significant impairments on our oil or gas reserves or assets. We do think that oil demands will peak before supply will peak. Therefore we will have the need to adapt our portfolio to remain relevant. Matt thanks for your time. Really appreciate it. Ben van beurden, the ceo of shell, on his earnings. Unilever has reported earnings as well. Sales beat the average estimate. Speaking to bloomberg, the ceo discussed the company sick growth and future strategy. You might see that. Weve had a very strong volume component. Think, Going Forward, we ,robably will see our growth and that is how it should be. Be waivedrgin gains in the first half for the second half . More towards the second half. We will significantly spend behind these new initiatives. 2017 oncee seen in more is a very high quality of Earnings Growth. Gross margins up 40 basis points. Underlying operating margins up 110 basis points. We sold in a record cash flow. That is a new record for the company and significantly ahead of our own estimates. It is nearly a year since you promised increase profit for shareholders. How close are you . Year,ce my tenure, every we have increased our topline growth and our bottom line. Are giving we increased profits to shareholders. Nothing has changed that. What see here is a strong increase in operating profit. That really reflects the continuous work weve done to make this a better company. Just in the last two years alone, weve done about 20 acquisitions. These acquisitions are in the future growth area. That is increasingly starting to be reflected in our numbers. Do you see any more acquisitions for this year . Yesterday we announced a new ice cream acquisition in romania. We are very happy with acquisitions. These are acquisitions that appeal to millennials and are in the healthy, natural segment for the future. Are there any segments that you think you are not represented well enough . We need to continue to work. What we now see is the enormous pace of change not only driven by technology or other factors, but above all, consumers. You see the millennials going rapidly towards natural and organic, so we will accelerate there. When did you reach a decision on the headquarters . As we have said, we want to simply have it in one. Our headquarters structure is such that it is going to be fairly small. The decision has to be taken in the coming weeks. This year . We wont announce a timing, because we are carefully studying it. What is important is where we put the headquarters of our divisions. We are now a company with three divisions. That is really what is driving our business. So we can next act some guidance on it . We will continue to communicate with the market. Central bankers from the fed to the ecb are hoping for a pickup in inflation. You are on the front lines. Where do you see the next 12 months in terms of inflation . On an overall macro level, we see the Global Economy picking up a little bit. 0. 2 , 0. 3 . It is the first time that both the imf, the oecd, the world bank, come with figures that are more possible. Stronger growth in europe, but it is a very pleasant thing. Stronger growth in the u. S. The tax cuts that were recently announced will lift in the near term some of the global economies. That is a positive thing. Reasons fore good us. Thanks very much to the ceo of unilever, speaking there with annemarie. I want to give you a quick behind the scenes look at bloomberg television, kind of how we make the sausage here, while guy is away. I pulled up his launchpad screen. This is what we get a glance at. Weve got various assets. Weve got the indexes up top. The european indexes havent opened up yet. S p futures are up. Weve got currencies across this row here. The most interesting aspect of todays market so far, with the exception of the earnings from corporates, is what we see happening in rates. Here are the german bunds. You can see the spike up here. 2. 74 on 10year rates. Bunds going up to 71 basis points. That could change the way the market operates. It is one of the things that sparked the selloff in equities on monday. It is going to start looking attractive to investors. You are finally really getting some yield, especially from a riskfree asset like u. S. Treasuries. Keep your eye on that. The open of stock trading is coming in just four minutes time. This is bloomberg. Matt welcome back to Bloomberg Markets, this is the european open. We are less than one minute away from the start of stock trading in Great Britain and across the continental study currencies have been affecting the trade as of late. The euro, at a high level, a little over 1. 24. Oil down a little bit, 68. 88. That did not stop shelf beating estimates in the last quarter. The nikkei index showing gains. So, out of asia, we are getting a little bit of impetus, a little bit of a tailwind here. And the s p futures right now, showing slight gians. Just barely holding their heads above water. Thats kind of the set up. Take a look at futures. This is a percent this prize, indicating a positive open across europe, with the exception of italy. Even stockholm has risen to a gain as far as the futures are concerned. Lets look at the market open here with the monitor. The ftse gaining 0. 1 . The rest of these indexes will take quite a while to open up, especially the dax as i point out all the time, the ftse here turning slightly negative. Basically unchanged. You see an indication that we will get gains in the other index. Now the ftse is up as those trades get going. It takes a few minutes for Market Makers to open these stocks. The cac up 0. 5 in paris and the ibex up 0. 6 in madrid. We are starting to see real gains here across the continent. Were indicated to see the same kind of gains, same size on the dax and on the smi in switzerland. Watch for a green screen as far as this monitor is concerned. Were going to see a green screen as far as the imap is concerned. Lets look at the Industry Groups, which are gaining in which are losing. We really see gains across the board. Financial strong gainers, and that is a good sign obviously. We also see gains in energy and materials over here. Weve had a couplei of those companies out reporting today. I i. T. Is up. Industrials and health care, all up. Really all of the Industry Groups are gaining on the s p right now, which is why we see such healthy gains in the indexes. That is why you see 0. 5 to 0. 6 on the continental indexes. We are just trailing that a little bit over here in london. Lets look at the germanspeaking indexes, see if they have opened up yet. They are very exact, german speakers. That is why it takes them so long to get up and running. Also, they drink a lot of coffee. The ftse is up, zero point 1 . We still see gains at 0. 5 in 0. 75 on themost ibex. It is taking a little while for the dax to open, but you should see green