I am mark barton. I am anna edwards. A warm welcome to the program this monday morning. Bloomberg reporters are standing by across the world. Manus cranny is here with details of this unfolding murder story surrounding the Worlds Largest cement makers. Carolyn is in paris following the altus deal. India sees a 4 billion deal in its direct drug sector. We will get the story from john dawson in hong kong. David tweed is focused on the future of industry. Tell you what is coming up this morning. A special Asset Allocation edition of on the move. Alex friedman and philip hilderbrand will join Francine Lacqua for an exclusive conversation on the market. Andhe big one, Holcim Lafarge have anonymously approved a merger that will create the worlds biggest cement maker. The new company will be led by the lafarge chief executive. Here to tell us every detail, i hope, manus cranny. Lets do it the bloomberg way. It is indeed a merger. Seven for seven. Seven members of holcim, Seven Members of lafarge on a new company which will be called lafargeholcim. How much money was spent to come up with that one . Or was it just a battle of who went first . Do you get this deal done . Do you need to get rid of quite a few units . You do. Somewhere between 10 to 15 of overall earnings. Serious investigation by the u. S. , european authorities, some pretty dominant positions. We think we are going to have to sell assets in brazil, india and china. A tour detting quite force in place. That is going to face regulatory hurdles. Here in europe, two thirds of their divestment are probably going to come where the greatest overlaps exist. If you think about political challenges in the likes of france, spain, etc. Where there is some substantive positions. They say job cuts will be limited. 39 billion swiss francs worth of combined you wonder if because of the overlaps in europe and the outstanding competition issues that you mentioned, you wonder if that is why the companies are guiding that the deal might not be gone until the first half of 2015. That is quite a long period of time. If you have got to go through all these various divestitures to get through the regulatory hurdles, the risk is you create a feeding frenzy that destroys value. You have to make concessions. You have to make asset sales. They may well be pushed through. That is the risk. France, it is all happening when it comes to m a this year. 60 billion euros worth of deals have been done. It certainly looks as if mr. Hollande is facing an industry which is jumping ahead of him. He has promised a great deal of change. Etc. Eaks on employment, they have not been delivered. French industry, look abroad. Peugeot looking for sales in china. Vivendi focusing on the United States of america. The telecoms business being left behind. , acrossare with lafarge borders. This is very much an International Global deal, not just a european deal. That is the shape of things to come. Afargeholcim thank you very much. We have another french deal. Altus, one of the bidding contests for vivendis french unit sfr. The deal is valued at more than 7 billion euros. Carolyn is in paris. Carolyn, why did out this jews this offer over the offer that was on the table from bouygues . There is a lot of official reasons. Vivendi will get less cash from altus, only 13. 5 billion euros. Bouygues offered 15. 5 billion euros. The First Official region is promised nothas to fire any sfr employees in the next 36 months. The chairman of vivendi said that the bouygues offer would have put 6000 sfr jobs at risk. That is the First Official reason. More importantly, the offer has less risk to be rejected by competition. A much smaller operator than bouygues. It wasnt clear whether the bouygues offer would have passed the regulatory test. The chairman this morning said it probably wouldnt have passed because it would control 47 of the market. 20 andwill keep about 20 will be publicly traded. Vivendi also wants to keep their shareholders happy. To chairman has promised return cash to shareholders either in a special dividend or share buyback. What does this mean for bouygues . What is the future for this divestment five business . Bouygues isem for that it will be left over in this deal. Orange control about 80 of the market in france, meaning that bouygues and the fourth operator will have to share just about 20 of the market. There is a lot of investments that need to be made for highspeed internet, for fiber. It is unclear whether bouygues will be able to keep that investment. That is why the bouygues offer was backed officially, openly by the french government and by the former industry minister. There is even speculation that bouygues could become in time a target because of the situation another possibly company could attempt to take over bouygues. Thank you very much. Elections kickoff in india. What better way than to launch a big deal . A 4 billion one in the generic drug sector. John dawson joins us with details. Good morning. This happened back in 2008 when you saw bought by a japanese company. Japan tried to use that company to break into india. It didnt quite work out as planned. They have given their vote in favor of some buybacks. They have become the biggest Pharmaceutical Company in india, the fifth biggest generics drug company specializing in urology, gas stroke him a cardiovascular. 4 billion in the deal. The one cloud here is the u. S. Regulatory authorities. They failed to meet standards a generic personal drug was recalled. Overall, the shares have been rising. Garcon pharma also seeing gains today. Gainer also in japan on the nikkei. Thanks, john. See you later. Just getting german industrial output up in february, four consecutive months. Another sign that growth in europes biggest economy is continuing to a salary. Economists to accelerate. Economists predicted a rise of. 3 . The Worlds Largest industrial fair is taking place in hanover. David tweed is getting a firsthand look at the latest technology trends. Two key european leaders will be attending the event. I am afraid there are no prizes for guessing that Angela Merkel will be one of them. Who is the other . Angela merkel is one of them. The other is mark which are from the netherlands. The dutch are partners in this event. Having two leaders here really underlines the importance of the sort of advance for the economy. This is the biggest industrial fair in the world. It is the Biggest Convention center in the world. It is difficult to give you a sense of the scale of this place. Millionalking about one square meters of exhibition coverage. I havent been able to count them all. Exhibitors here at this show. More than a quarter of a Million People will come through here. Quite a few ofy them coming through. This has always been a fair that has been about innovation. What is the theme this year . The theme is a theme with is pushed forward by the german government. Industry 4. 0. It is about automation. Automating the manufacturing process. We are talking about becoming more efficient, increased productivity, better use of energy and also being able to customize automation. Many of the exhibitors here will be showing off the latest in what they can do. The secondary theme here is energy use. Always one of the themes here in germany. Course is such an important industry for germany. Many of the product you are standing in front of will be exported to markets such as china. Some people raise concerns about how strong the economy in china is going to be. Which types of companies show up at this type of event . You have got the big heavyweight Companies Like siemens, but you also got what i am at the back off stand here. I will be speaking to the owner of backoff later today. This is an automation company. It was established in 1980. It is family owned. It has 2500 employees. It is typical of these companies , they havent necessarily heard of them because they are family owned. They represent 52 of germanys industrial output and represent and employ 15. 5 Million People. They are incredibly important. That is why it is so important to see exactly what they are doing. I will be back with more as we go through the day. Angela merkel will be walking past this stand where we are with. With mark rutte. David tweed reporting from hanover. Coming up, can clean energy pay off . We will talk to the ceo of a Clean Energy Company which just reported earnings. Stay with us. Time for todays company news. Indias largest drugmaker drugmaker agreed to by ranbaxy laboratories. They make generic drugs. Expect 250 million in revenue and reduced cost by the third year after completion of the deal. Microsoft is going hollywood with a cast of comedians including Sarah Silverman and seth green. At are involved in shows microsofts new television studio. , the superhero sequel to the 2011 movie, generated 96 million in its weekend debut. For walt disney, the figure is a record. Welcome back. This is countdown. Time in london is 17 minutes past seven. We just had earnings from good energy group, an alternative to the big six as they are known. Joining us now to talk about those numbers is the chief executive officer. Thank you very much for coming in. As ank about your sector alternative to the Big Six Energy suppliers. How big can this oh . We have seen our own growth go up more than double in the last year. I think we can see this sector we are now producing around 30 of the uks renewable electricity. We are seeing significant growth. I think this can continue. Could britain be powered by 100 Renewable Energy by 2015 . Is it possible . Theoretically it is possible. We have done research in terms of what power you could get. We are trying to prove it from a market point of view. You do it, what are the issues, how can you spread that out across how are you doing it . We buy power from four different sources of power. Wind, solar, biomass and small hydro. We balance that through the grid. What we are working on is how we balance that longterm. Whether Battery Storage technology is going to play a part. Our customers generate a lot of the power themselves. How small do the generators get . We look after around 60,000 small generators. Most of those are generating power in their own homes, producing about 50 of their power requirements. This is a really interesting innovation. You have your own wind farm, dont you . You have all sorts of investments across the u. K. How much are you spending on these projects . We have just switched on a new wind farm. That project was in the order of 60 million. We developed 100 megawatts of largescale solar assets that we will be building out hopefully this year. Those sites are in the order of 100 million that will be required to build. We will do that in partnership with others or through funding. U. K. Energy consumers have had to pay a renewables levy in recent years. That proved to be a little bit controversial. Many of the bigger Energy Suppliers blamed it at least in part for driving price rises to customers. Therefore that had to be rolled back. Talk us through your thoughts on that. Were you in favor of the levee . What was interesting about directly involved with energy efficiency. Energy efficiency is really important. We havent cracked it. Whether the Energy Sector should deliver that or not. We need to do some more work about how we pay for that going forward. Our houses need to be more energyefficient. The important thing is whether we should put it on the bills or do it through general taxation. The energyome off bills but now it is back in the tax code. This is something we need to work on. The quality of our houses and how we develop sustainable lives going forward. Are the tariffs cheaper than the big six . They are at the moment. One of the key things we have been doing, looking at driving improvement in profitability, and margins, but also trying to make sure we become more competitive. That is by putting the customer at the center of what we do. Thank you very much, juliett davenport. Up, the biggest election in world history. Or on the staggering numbers behind indias vote. Welcome back to countdown. Todayia goes to the polls in an election that will determine who will lead the country with a population of 1. 2 billion. That is set to last for five weeks. Ryan chilcote looks at the staggering numbers behind the voting process. The Worlds Largest democracy and this is the Worlds Largest election. Voters, more than every man, woman and child in all of north america and europe. They will be casting their ballots in nine rounds of voting over the next five weeks at a million polling stations equipped with almost 2 million electronic voting machines. 500r job, choose more than lawmakers and the party that will run the worlds 10th largest economy. Whoever wins will rule the country that is home to almost 1 5 of the worlds people. Anxious about an economy in its worst shape in a decade even as prices rise by 10 a year. Country and asal colossal challenge. Who the frontut runner is and what it means for business. It looks like indians one change. Mode he and the bjp party is the front runner. They look poised to not get a majority of the seats in the parliament, but a big chunk. Perhaps enough to form a stable coalition. Generally speaking that is seen as good for business. If you look at the province that he has been running for the last 13 years, generally speaking, the economy there has gone better than it has nationally. The only thing is, he is seen as probusiness. The interesting thing is, not in the retail space. You look at a retailer like tesco, they are the first to tiptoe into the supermarket area in india. They are working together the current government has been trying to open up that space. They have a handful of shops but not in the gujarat province. They are not allowed to do it because of this opposition by the bjp against investment in retail. That is the issue. They reiterated that they dont think it is a good idea for the entire nation. Thank you very much. Of the uks Biggest Companies have a high appetite for risk. E will see why when countdown returns. Welcome back to countdown. Lets get to Jonathan Ferro for the fx check. Lets start with euro dollar. 1. 3706. A bit higher than expected. One that could potentially get more interesting over the next couple of months is dollar yen. Concludespan tomorrow, nobody expecting a change tomorrow. Going forward, after that consumption tax hike, will the bank of japan do more . It is not even a debate, it is a matter of when. Here is a poll for you. 72 of respondents think they will ease, the bank of japan will do more easing by july or earlier. Expectations on that are pretty high. Thank you very much. These are the Bloomberg Top headlines. A british warship has reached the area where signals were heard from what may be a black box of the most sink the missing malaysian airliner. A black a vessel picked up the pings in the indian ocean. The batteries typically have a life of 30 days. A banking regulator in the state of new york is investigating Credit Suisse. The u. S. Justice department has been probing the banks role in possible client tax evasion for three years. New york is seeking documents from federal authorities. Prokremlin demonstrators have seized official buildings in ukraines eastern region. The protesters have called for a boycott of the president ial elections and a referendum to join russia. Ukraines government is blaming russia for stoking the unrest. Risk appetite among cfos of the uks Biggest Companies is at the highest in 6. 5 years according to deloitte. For the First Quarter of 2014. Joining us with some of the takeaways is one of the reports authors and deloittes chief economist. Risk appetite at a 6. 5 year high. Explain what that means for our viewers. Cfos whether now is a good time to take risk onto their balance sheets. What that means is, is now a good time to do investment, and a, tohey, to expand m expand overseas . The risksistent with appetite you are seeing in financial markets, relatively Strong Performance by equities versus bonds. Are we in safe hands . You see cfos feeling so prorisk. If you think of it from a policy makers point of view, what they have been trying to do is stimulate the animal spirits of the corporate sector. They are doing it by running very loose Monetary Policy. We see the capitalists become very available. Going tot in terms of the market, initial Public Offerings or secondary offerings , or is that going to the banks . A lot of the anecdotal evidence has been about the difficulty in getting access to capital for smaller businesses. We saw an absolute collapse in Credit Availability even for very Large Businesses in 2008 and 2009. In the last year, there has been a dramatic improvement in capital availability both in relation to equity and bank borrowing. Quite a change in the last year. This is an environment where corporate have got good access to capital and where the external economic influence of uncertainty has fallen dramatically. Cfossiness investment, feeling pretty buoyant arent they . They are. They are quite bullish. The hope for the u. K. Recovery is that it will be driven less by the consumer. These readings are consistent with that. That theynteresting are fairly confident about inflation being kept under control. Buts something of a sweet sweet spot the u. K. Economy. It is quite interesting. We asked them three months ago how they felt about inflation quite negative. As inflation has fallen, they have become much more positive. Now the overwhelming majority think inflation will stay on target. From the bank of englands point of view, they must be quite chuffed. They are confident in inflation. They expect rates to only rise gradually. Which shouldnt be troublesome.