Names in business shoot from the hip. Mark in Silicon Valley, they are in their own world. Sen. Sanders this is a litmus test. I am worried about the future of american democracy. Howard they are scaring the hell out of people. Shery plus, conversations with highflying executives at the singapore airshow. It is all straight ahead on bloomberg best. Shery hello. I am shery ahn. Welcome to bloomberg best, a weekly look at the most important Business News, analysis, and interviews from Bloomberg Television around the world. Lets begin with a day by day review of the weeks top headlines. On monday, trading resumed in china following the Lunar New Year holiday amid new concerns over the stability of the yuan. A day of dramatic headlines here with china dominating the news. The pboc governor broke his long silence. What did he say . What was significant about it . His message in and of itself, i would not say we officially knew. He said we are not engaged in competitive currency devaluation. He is expecting fluctuation in the yuan. But the fact that he said at all is quite interesting. It should have some clarity for investors. His key message out of it, that we are not going to push the currency down just to find restore export competitiveness. We do expect volatility along the way. Especially against the moving u. S. Dollar. We can only take him at his word, but there is a central message coming from china that it is not about competitive devaluation. Shery that is what a lot of Asset Managers said, the fact that he said anything at all was a sign of support. We also saw the sign of report in the yuan fixed rate today. Stephen that is right, this poor set of data that we got today on the trade front hints that it does not make too much sense for china to maintain a strong currency. Trade data suggests that they would kind of like a weaker one. Francine the Energy Ministers of saudi arabia and russia meeting, and the meeting ended less than an hour ago. So we have an agreement between saudi, russia, and two other opec countries to freeze production. What does it mean . The markets were a little bit disappointed because they wanted a cut. Javier it was too much for the first meeting of these two countries, at least publicly, in eight months. But you think about where we were only three months ago, where we are today. It is a massive seachange in the situation. Three months ago, saudi arabia and russia were fighting for market share. They were trying to undercut moscow. Moscow was trying to do the same in china. Over that, both countries were fighting a proxy war in syria. Today in doha, the ministers of both countries i do not think they keep the subset, but they really reach a preliminary agreement. They slowed production in january levels and i think that , is quite significant. Francine they have a floor, they have a price they do not want the threshold to be below, and that is 30. Javier what that is indicating, russia and saudi arabia are trying to tell the market, that is it. You try to bring the price below 30, it will bring a collapse. We are only beginning to understand that what is going on behind the scene. The fed released the minutes for january meeting transcripts , show policymakers expressed concern with the following commodity prices. Risks in the u. S. Economy. Joining us from washington is Bloomberg Economics editor mike mckee. Mike, there has been a reticence on the part of the fed to actually say what the risks are. They keep hunting. Do you read any more understanding out of this document on where they see the risks are and whether the balance is or positive . Negative mike we know where the risks are from the fed minutes, brendan, but we do not know how big those risks are or whether they will actually come to pass. Now remember this was back in , january. It is been a month. Since that time, janet yellen already has testified again on capitol hill about a lot of this stuff. But the minute currently show fed officials were struggling to understand the implications of falling oil prices, a stronger dollar, chinese growth, and volatile Financial Markets all at a time when Consumer Spending was hanging in and the labor market was remaining strong. In general, the minutes say, many sought many saw those developments as increasing the Downside Risk to the economy, although they really had no framework for how bad those risks would be. Here is a key quote a number of participants noted the large magnitude of changes in domestic Financial Market conditions was difficult to reconcile with incoming information on u. S. Economic development. If things were so bad, why was the data still coming in ok on the labor market in particular, brendan . They did not know, so as you say, they punted. They said, lets wait and see what happens. Alix walmart stock is falling in todays session, dropping 5 at one point, nearly wiping out if gains if gains for 2016. The Worlds Largest retailer lowering its annual Sales Forecast to relatively flat. Walmart is the biggest laggard in the dow today. Shannon investors can ask themselves, no growth next year when you knock out currency, and we do live in a world of currency. Youll get to factor in currency. Profit declining, so why walmart at this point . We were talking yesterday about the stock performance. The stock had been doing really great this year. People kind of looked at it as a flight to safety the safe , haven. If there is a recession, an assumption that people will trade down to walmart, and we have seen wages going up at the bottom end with minimum wage increases. But i think today is a reminder that there are still issues with this company. This company is not growing. Why have your money in walmart rather than amazon . Alix shannon, you and i were talking yesterday that if ecommerce continues to decline, someone will have to answer to that with 8 ecommerce growth in the Fourth Quarter. What do they do about that . Shannon they are blaming outside markets. Brazil, china, the slowdown in those economies, and the u. K. , where they are seeing increased competition there. There is always some reason. Amazon Fourth Quarter retail sales are up 20 . Something they have to do, they have to spend in that area. It is really expensive. They spent almost 1 billion online last year. They will spend almost 1 billion more this year. David breaking news today, yahoo s board has formed an independent committee to explore its strategic options. It also says that separating its alibaba stakes is critical. There is an independent Committee Formed by independent Board Members that does not include melissa myers. They hired heavy hitters. Tom they want to show the market that they are taking very seriously this desire for them to find a buyer. The concern was that Marissa Mayer in management and the board were on two separate pages. The concern is for a buyer, marissa and management are not behind the idea of a sale. They are committed to doing to , working on yahoo what the board meetings show is that we really want to make this thing work. David two days ago, they were shutting down their verticals, including their finance vertical. They are laying off people, shutting down offices. The board might think, wait a minute, we are thinking about selling it. Not retooling it. Christine if you are thinking about selling it, it is not to say we are desperate, find a buyer, it is we have other options, an alternative to an agreement, right . Isnt that the thing to think about . Tom she has also that to think about morale among the staff. You have to retain people to run the business. No matter where marissa goes when this deal goes down, you need people to actually keep the trains running. The more youre talking about look, were going to close down shop, end up in the hands of private equity, verizon, whoever it is, the more people are going to say, what are we doing here . Shery later in the program, we will focus on two sectors very much in the news this week for different reasons. There is plenty of optimism around global aviation at the singapore airshow. The outlooks are not so sunny for european banks. Coming up on bloomberg best, a roundup of company news from around the world. Shery welcome back to bloomberg best. I am shery ahn. The commodities crunch forces a mining giant to scale back while an upstart wireless carrier promises to keep growing. Those are just a couple of the most Interesting Company stories we covered this week on Bloomberg Television. Here is a look back at a busy five days. Emily a watershed moment in a long simmering debate between Silicon Valley and washington. Apple is rejecting a court order to help investigators unlock the iphone of one of the shooters in the San Bernardino terrorist attacks. Ceo tim cook framed it as a chilling attack on civil liberties. So what do we know now and how does this play out . Chris the government has come to apple with a court order trying to compel them to give them the ability to unlock an iphone. Apple is pushing back. There is no sign that any side is going to stand down. This will be a legal case that will play out for a while. Greg i think apple should resist the order. It would set a precedent. He would mean that the fbi it would mean that the fbi could go to apple and demand that apple unlock any phone, no matter what operating system it had. It would go then to apple and say well, if you can give us access to phones, how about computers, and then it would go to other providers and demand the same thing. There is a lot at stake. Emily cyrus, you disagree. Explain your position here. Can think apple should participate in a very controlled away. I do not agree with giving blanket access to the technologies, as my two cohorts have stated, but i do believe that given the situations that we are dealing with today, i think apple should participate directly in the process. That would require the government to change their rules as it relates to how they investigate situations, who is involved in that, but i do think apple should be directly involved in that and not have to be compelled to give up the keys to the kingdom, if you will. Shery softbank is surging, up nearly 14 after saying it is ready to shore up its share price and spend a record amount buying back stock. This to be worth almost 4. 5 billion. How does this compare with their own past purchases as well as with others . Pavel that is right, at 500 billion yen, it would be worth about 14 of the companys outstanding shares. To give you a comparison, softbanks biggest rival in japan has announced a 350 billion yen buyback earlier this month. For softbank shareholders, this could not come soon enough. The stock has been clobbered this year, falling 28 yesterday before the buyback announcement. This puts the companys market value actually below the sum of the values of its shareholders, which includes sprint, alibaba, the game maker supercell, as well as yahoo japan. Helped thehat really announcement is it will not borrow more money to pay for the buyback. It is good news because the company is already 100 billion in debt. Instead, softbank withdrawing its Cash Holdings as well as asset sales to pay for the acquisition. Guy anglos 5. 6 billion loss, that is fullyear earnings, and announced a massive overhaul to operation. They are currently saying rating cuts to junk yesterday by moodys. What do you think investors are convinced about the strategy update that we have seen this morning . Jesse it seems the plan outline is ambitious, but they are actually talking about a complete exit from box commodities. They want to focus on consumerdriven materials that will benefit from longterm Growth Trends of the economy evolves. It is quite a significant change to exit coal and iron strategies. I think a lot of exits have the outlook for those commodities much worse than other commodities we are talking about. Guy you are getting out of bulk, you are focusing on consumer. Some would call this a fire sale. Is that your description . Mark i think it is stripping back to the core, rebuilding the base and making sure we are fit to go forward in the most positive way we can. We have been making changes over the last 10 years that have been incremental. I think it was time for a bold step out. We have been working on that strategy over the last couple of years, and i think in this market, the opportunity is there to reset and start with a very different looking portfolio and making some bold moves. Brendan Corporate Bond sales are seeing the slowest start to a year since since 2005. Today is a special day. Apple and other Tech Companies are leading the resurgence in offerings after there was frozen last week. What is going on . Lisa there are concerns about global turmoil, global growth, and finally you are starting to see the safest, most respected Companies Come to market apple, comcast, ibm, toyota. These are the fortress Balance Sheettype companies coming out with really big issuances and saying, you know what, lets take advantage. Yields are still pretty low. Brendan like the adage in home finance you can only get a mortgage when you do not need one. Lisa you raise such an interesting point. Apple what does apple need more money for . Right . They have a fortress Balance Sheet. They have got 38 billion in cash in short term. That is on the Balance Sheet available to apple. They have got 78 billion in annual revenue. 56 billion in debt is pretty miniscule in the scheme of things, so they are piling it on in my mind as we look at this. There has been an all but closure of Capital Markets to higher Risk Companies that persists. The pace of highyield bond issuance is the slowest since 2003 for this period this year. And yet you are seeing the , issuance of safer debt. For what . Apple is going to use this to buyback shares, do this, do that who knows, who cares, right . People will give them their money. It is sort of, the Tech Industry is notoriously fickle, and people are not getting paid all that much, but this is perceived as safety. Emily groupon shares surging for a second straight day after a significant investment by alibaba. The stock has jumped some 83 in just two days. Those shares are down about 50 over the last 12 months. What in the world can alibaba do for groupon that justifies a huge stock jump like this . Gil it is really what groupon can do for alibaba. If you think about alibaba, there is a strategical and a tactical imperative. Remember, alibaba is a company that thinks in decades. Jack ma famously says he wants them to be around for three centuries. That is how he sees entry into the u. S. Market, a longterm imperative. What he is doing now is planting seeds jet. Com, lyft, snapchat. These are seeds he has planted in order to learn about the u. S. Market, so when invision is ready, invasion is ready, they will be prepared. Emily how optimistic are you about groupons longterm future . Gil there is a realization that they are not going to 0 because alibaba took a stake. Especially if you are thinking about betting against groupon. Tmobile, the nations Third Largest wireless carrier reported Rising Profit and , predicted as many as 3. 4 million new subscribers this year. Stephanie dare i say, you crushed it. How did you do it . Tell me, what are you doing inside of this company . John you are right, we crushed it. We added 8. 3 million customers in 2015, again. We had 108 of all the postpaid phone growth in the industry. Let me give you an idea of what that means. In 2015, tmobile added 3. 5 million postpaid phones subscribers. At t, verizon, and sprint , can you guess, together 269,000. Stephanie are you making money doing it . You started this price war a couple years ago with the on the carriers, it is great for consumers but how about you . , john the model is working. What does that mean . That subscriber growth is leading to revenue growth. Service revenue is up 11. 7 yearoveryear. The ebitda growth we grew 32 . Adjusted Free Cash Flow in q4 was up 800 yearoveryear, so the model is working. And were doing it by solving customer pain points. It sounds cliche, but the uncarrier stands for fixing what was a stupid, broken, arrogant industry for the most important thing in most peoples lives. Shery you are watching bloomberg best. I am shery ahn. Last week, troubles at Deutsche Bank raised serious questions of the health of one of europes largest Financial Institutions. This week, the discussion broadened. Is there a Crisis Brewing in european banking . It is a topic that sparked debate throughout the week on Bloomberg Television. Manus since the fall of Lehman Brothers in september 2008, eight of europes biggest banks have mass layoffs, billions and lost hundreds of billions of market value. Senior writer for Bloomberg News ed robinson has written about what he has called europes banking nightmare. Define a banking crisis, if you could, and is this one . It certainly feels nerveracking, covering it on a daytoday basis. Edward in the shortterm term, at least a banking crisis. You saw 10 plunges in Deutsche Bank, credit suisse, et al. You saw massive defaults in Deutsche Bank. We saw a lot of fear in the market, but i would argue that that is a kind of shortterm feel, that was last week in the longterm, what we are seeing is the next chapter in a transformation of this industry. I like to look back to last may 21