Hello. Welcome to countdown. Im mark barton. And im anna edwards. A standingeport is by across the world ready to deliver the stories that will drive your day. Marcus cranny is following ahead of the fed decision and we are also in berlin on the latest deal in brussels. Preks hans nichols is in leipzig and Caroline Hyde has the most difficult assignment. Shes outside a chocolate shop in london with the story on the surging cocoa. Click some people get all the tough diggs. Lets get a gauge on whether the markets are pricing in the tapering this evening in any form. Click to the speak to anybody, whether it comes tonight, january, march, the markets are prepared. As people who have kids, if you take sugar away from children, is anything preparing you for the ruckus that might actually come . There will be a reaction. It will come for a day, says Goldman Sachs. They make it very clear. 90 of the bond market have priced this end. I think thats the issue. Aboutd elerian will talk that tonight. Have a look at the bond market. This is the essence of what we are dealing with. You have the build up to september and disappointment. Could this be another day . Yearnted to focus on 30 bonds that have gone to nearly 4 and staying at the top end of that trade range. The bond market to a certain extent is ready. The critical issue is this. One year money, five years time. Event that1994style is what they are trying to do. One year money and five years time is trading up at a rise of four percent and thats not what happened in 1994 but they are a bit more skittish. The rising streak of volatility in record, 14 of the past 16 days. The equity market, they want to protect the biggest rally in a decade and investors put in 126 billion into equities this year. Forward guidance is the key. Yes, it will be the critical issue. I liked what Mohamed Elerian had to say. They have to give us a package of information. What might they do with reserves at the bank . Could they reduce that Interest Rate . What will they do with v6 point five percent Unemployment Rate and the inflation rate . Would they lower the unemployment target . E dont have inflation, do we . The essences this. No matter which way this might go, there is one message and one message only that will be reiterated. Thating is not tightening will be the epitaph of ben bernanke. Will he have it tattooed on him, manus . Theince im an investor in tattoo business. Where would you put it . European finance ministers trying to hammer out a deal. Angela merkel telling them to get on with that. Lets get to david tweed. Any progress . Flex Angela Merkel after months of not wanting to rock the boat because she was trying to get a coalition together has spoken. You are right. She told them to get on with it. She said theyve been talking about banking unions for months and they help as heads of state and government wont have to deal with it at the summit. That will be a moot question. It looks as though they made a little bit of progress last night on one big Sticking Point and that Sticking Point is the backstop to the resolution. Let me try to explain. If youre going to have a resolution fund, there will eventually be 55 billion euros in it. If theres not enough money to should it neednk to be recapitalized, there needs to be a backstop. That is what they are bickering over at the moment. Will they use the european stability mechanism, the european imf, the permanent rescue fund that will have 500 billion in . Wolfgang schauble says no. It will not be a credit line. They refused to talk about it after the meeting that finished at 2 30 a. M. We will probably find out more today when the rest of the European Union finance ministers join the ministers there in brussels. David, there was some progress in the Eu Parliament on a deposit safety plan. How will that work . Thing. Is a separate its a safety plan for depositors, a Deposit Guaranty Fund. Inks will have to pay in 0. 8 into these funds. It will not be a common fund, something that some euro ministers wanted. It will be separate funds. At the end of the day, if you look at the Deposit Guaranty Fund and the resolution, you will have about 100 26 billion euros locked up in that. I have to build up that money over the next 10 years and will be difficult when they actually want banks to be lending that they have actually made progress in that particular area. Happensfind out what later today when all these pieces will start to come together and do it Angela Merkel once the finance ministers to do. European editor. Tracks russian president Vladimir Putin and the ukrainian president striking a deal channeling russian Financial Aid to the ukraine. This comes as the president of ukraine grapples with the biggest protest in the country since 2004. Ryan chilcote has the details. He got everything he wanted out of this meeting and what we dont know was what president putin got. Thats whats remarkable. A 15 billion bailout on the russians will start buying ukrainian bonds this month. Perhaps as much as 3 billion before the end of the year and even get a discount on the price of gas. Perill be one third less million cubic meters. That is a real Bargain Basement price. It is below the european spot price which is about 400 even after you take out the transport for the ukraine, its a good price. Prom,ways talk about gaz the stick that they can use to punish countries they do not favor. Here it is being used as a carrot. What does president clinton get . We know he wants ukraine to be part of the russian trade union. They said they did not talk about it. They were asked and they said the topic did not,. It did not come up. One of the former central banker said the only place you can get free cheeses in a mouse trap. I love that quote. Its a russian expression. Time russiahe first has been involved in a bailout of this magnitude . They were on the receiving end of bailouts themselves in the 1990s. We had ukraine going to the European Union asking for money. The European Union declined. Thosef back in april, conversations ended in they were not able to come to any kind of arrangement. China and now russia steps in. We talk about russia lending money for ideological reasons but theyve done very little of that. You have to remember theres a lot with the russians lending money and in the end they did not lend to anything. The only country they have really helped out was cyprus and two that was 2. 5 3,000,000,000 euros. A lot of the europeans have money and cypriot tanks. When they really needed the money, the russian said no. Quite an extraordinary move using their own sovereign wealth fund, their own savings, the rainy day fund, rating the cookie jar to help prop up the ukraine. Thanks, ryan. A workers at the amazon german warehouses are on strike to mandate higher pay. Hans nichols joins us for more on the story. Good morning. Right behind me is an amazon distribution center. They are backing into base but at the same time, protesters are starting to arrive. Some 400500 protesters and what they want to do is call for higher wages. The dispute centers on what they are paid. Amazon says they are getting 950 per hour and thats on the upper end of the logistics side but the workers want to be paid more as retailers. Their average wages are about 11. 4 euros per hour. When we have is potentially 1100 workers out of the 23,000 striking and its a test of wills. Its a question of logistics. Will amazon be able, with nine Distribution Centers in germany, deliver christmas packages on time . Or will the union force them to bend, to break . Not have had a policy of dealing with unions. They had a bit of a setback in delaware where arty technicians have earned the right to unionize but thats a small fraction of the number of employees they have in delaware and worldwide. From amazon is a lot of bluster. We see no advantage entering into a collective wage agreement. We will try to talk to the Company Later today. What are amazons options from what you said . They dont seem to be any negotiating mood. They can move distributional centers abroad and there is talk of opening up reDistribution Centers in neighboring dan two in the czech republic. Europe. Hem all over germany is the secondbiggest market. Can they work around strikers in germany if the union continues to gather strength . Hans nichols live there in leipzig. Its the season of overindulgence. Chocolate will be consumed in this year, the confectionery trend is catching on in asia. Correspondentess Caroline Hyde is outside a chocolate shop with more on the cocoa supply story. Good morning, caroline. Am actually inside a piece of heaven. Its the only handmade chocolate company. Of the finertaste quality chocolate in western europe and as china and asia demand surges, the prices of and are rising through through. We are telling all about the trends and the lack of supply to meet that demand. In the meantime, some Investigative Journalism is in the cards. Its only right that i try one. Amaretto, ginger, and caramel. Amaretto . Add 12 minutes past 6 00 a. M. That is punchy. Never too early. She will never return. Weve lost her. Be poisedmarkets may to move higher in 2014, but our next guest says it depends on keeping the storm clouds that day. Bay. Time for todays company news. Tesco plans to enter the supermarket business in india. The largest grocer is likely to invest about 110 million in a unit of the group that runs in indian supermarket chain. Sony is said to be exploring a sale of its audio recognition business. The software is best known for leading apple itunes quickly identify songs from a cd. They acquired the business in 2008 and a deal could be reached by the end of the year. To have picked bank of America Goldman sachs and hsbc to work on a Public Offering of its retail arm. Watson would be valued at more than 20 billion in an ipo. They plan to list in hong kong. Welcome back to countdown. Im anna edwards and im mark barton. Ifestors are waiting to see the announcement will start tapering. Our next guest says with more qe we can expect that the markets to head higher. Lets bring in Matthew Beasley. Markets with hold . Theywere to occur tried to forecast it forward and we see a lot of the trends in german markets higher this year continuing into next year. Everyone is very focused on the u. S. Tapering and we have to remember that the bank of japan is going to further expansion to provide some level of support. Its the reason that tapering does not derail that rally because it will be replaced by a stronger growth story in the u. S. Bottom line for us. We look at the tapering thats occurring and yet it is not the foreshadowing in rate rises. Ande having this debate when it tells us the economy is better, all things being equal, it should be good for corporate profitability which should be good for stocks. Can we narrow the game we see this year, the msci thats had its best game since this year. You mentioned the boj up by almost 50 . Could we replicate the sort of games weve seen in some of these big equity markets in 2014 . We need to see a lot of Profit Growth for that to happen. Markets have been driven higher by quantitative easing and by the anticipation of an rising. There are still some support and is a lot of tapering, stopping a bond purchases in the u. S. Plus there is everything going on in japan. We nasty corporate profitability rise and the guest would be after what true or five years, pretty jerk roan he and cost cutting and there is more profit leverage and a lot of corporate p l than management believes and if they can rise substantially and surprise people, yes, markets can go higher in 2014 as well. And particularly in europe, outperform its might surprise. You think there is more room to play, more to go for in terms of increasing profits for european businesses . Many traditional Business Models especially looking at the dislocation because of the severity of the economic downturn which we suffered. Cuttingcorporations costs for four or five years consistently trying to catch up with the declines in revenues from underlying economies. If that reverses, things have gotten less worse and there are still pockets of weakness. Maybe france, for example, but things are looking a little bit better and our guest would mean surprise on the bottom line. Look atup by 10 but germany and france. Theyve outperformed because of our dominance within the ftse 100. Ftse is up. The mayor Global Investors and we look at them bottomup. Ofis the greatest example the common sense approach to Global Investors. There are so Many Companies in the ftse 100 that are not u. K. Sensitive than the 250 is a much more sensible barometer of the u. K. Economy and i would point to that as a representative of the outlook for the u. K. Economy which is towards the top of the list. Ask Matthew Beasley will stay with us. When we come back, his thoughts on which individual stocks from the list he favors. Countdown welcome back to. Welcome back to countdown. One week until christmas. If anyone wants to put any stocks in your wish list, what would they include . If you believe that there will be 11 recovery in europe, the top line will surprise people. Significant gdp growth, but we will see these Companies Benefit from lots of aggressive cost cutting. I point to they are dominantly spain. Y and it is very tightly correlated. They have a very strong relationship. I have been decimated given the dramatic downside and willing to advertise. As these things normalize, they have been aggressively cutting costs to keep up with the dramatic revenue decline. I would suggest that has the potential to be a surprise for us all next year. They are cutting costs better than other Media Companies . In line with revenue and how its exciting more precipitously than you expect because of the unwillingness to advertise. As that normalizes, you expect to see some topline recovery. You get leverage. Another stock you like thomas alcatel lucent. It had a good year if you look at the stock price. The big talk is if it will hook up with the new nokia, the non handset nokia, the mobile network. Will that happen . There is a great chance it will. Theres lots of selfhelp. It can compete with the likes of wah way huawei and others. Pricing is better than it has been for a long while in the company is on some steady footing with some competent aggressive management. We think we make money where theres lots of change occurring bottomup that people understand and ill could tell, this is not the worlds leading player in terms of returns but its a company where there is significant scope for recovery and scope for profit leverage as the topline stabilizes. In a year when the review of the banks will take center stage , matthew how do you decipher which bank you favor amidst a whole load of banks within europe . There are a lot of banks that are still investable. They have shied away fearing the unknown. Strongd a very performance and in the Third Quarter when the prospects for europe improved, i would point towards a bank like abc and belgium where the terms are very high and its a very consolidated market. I would also point towards unicredit and lloyds. Matthew beasley, thank you. Coming up, amc Public Offering before the stock hits the nyse later today. Stays in a Bloomberg Top headlines. Mark carney and his message about Interest Rates. The bank of england governor says the recovery needs to be sustained before considering a rate rise. Carney says it will be sometime in the future when the central bank pulls back stimulus. Way to runvery has a before it would be appropriate to consider adjusting the appropriate level of monetary stimulus the me continue to provide to the economy. Ben bernanke will hold his last schedule the fed newscast after the fomc releases its latest policy statement. The central bank has pledged to continue buying bonds until the labor markets improve. Todays statement comes after u. S. Payroll jumped more than expected in november. Jpmorgan and Deutsche Bank are ban on chat rooms. Deutsche bank wants to widen the restrictions to other parts of the bank and the move comes amid allegations of investigations into currency market manipulations and Interest Rate beginning. Hello. Welcome to countdown. 631 a. M. In london. The amc rates about 300 32 million in its initial Public Offering. Lets get the details from zeb eckert who joins us now from hong kong. Good morning to you. This marks the return to the Public Market of amc after nine years going public on the new york stock exchange. The ipo priced at a discount to its peers. 18 per share here are offered at 1820 dollars and its main competitors, Regal Cinemas and cinemark trade at a higher multiple. This is seven times the forecast 2014n km partners for earnings. Even thought is a value of about 3. 4 billion including debt ebitda is about 3. 4 billion. They operate in the biggest American Cities facing higher rents and we also understand its later to the game in terms of updating theaters and still grappling with costs. We should note the chinese billionaire, the third most successful in the third against, richest the third richest, he bought the chain back in 20 12 and hes banking on a rebound in the United States for amc and its properties outside of the u. S. How do