Future of orange as it closes in on its ee deal. Vodafone reports Third Quarter results in the next hour. Mark welcome to countdown. Anna coming up, bill gates reduces his stake in truck microsoft to 3 as against 1. 5 billion of stock to his foundation. Mark frances biggest banks earnings for the previous quarter. Net income rising to 1. 3 billion euros from 110 Million Euros per year. That is when the bank set aside money for legal costs. That 1. 3 billion euro figure just below the 1. 4 billion average that analysts conveyed. Escalating levees on europes biggest banks will dent 2016 that income by 500 Million Euros. That will endanger the profitability target once more. The economic recovery is winker weaker than the bank had foreseen and Interest Rates are lower. On the dividend front, bnp will pay 1. 5 euros per share for 2014. That is unchanged. It did maintain the payout even though annual net income fell by 97 . It is the lowest since the bank was created by a merger in 2000. Bnp paid a record 8. 97 billion fine for violating u. S. Sanctions against iran, cuba and sudan. The firm is spending 250 Million Euros to improve compliance. The chief Financial Officer has been speaking to bloomberg. He began by talking about that u. S. Fine. Of course there is a major exceptional, the settlement to u. S. Authorities. As you know the bank has taken remedial action. This is basically witnessed in from the top line. The top line has grown in all of the businesses. Costs are managed on the back of our program and cost risk is down, so this is a good operational performance. How do you plan to slow down in any u. S. Activities . Lars what we have seen as weve got the confidence of our clients. We had an increase in 2014 of 9 topline. There are a lot of challenges in the u. S. This waiver you are waiting for from the u. S. Department of labor to remain qualified as an asset manager in the u. S. How do you handle the challenges . Lars we should separate our u. S. Activities which have not been impacted. The u. S. Settlement has to do with the u. S. Branch transactions. The thing you are talking about is already being handled. From that point of view, as i said it is being executed and there is no impact on servicing to the clients. You did more on acquisitions last year, you do more this year or could you reduce some activity . Lars we are in a situation where he can use capital. We might be able to redeploy all the capital if guided on an dividend of 45 . It is not impossible there will be excess. I stress, it is not something very sizable and is not something that really integrates well operationally or market wise, or client wise. We will keep our eyes open. Mark that was the bnp chief Financial Officer lars speaking to caroline. Anna the european restricted loans to its Financial System. The government may run out of cash by the end of this month. According to two people familiar with the company. The move puts pressure on greeces new Prime Minister to stay the course on the Bailout Program. The timing is interesting. Later today the greek finance minister meets his german counterpart. Lets get life to Honda Nichols who is in berlin. Hans nichols who is in berlin. Where the crucial meeting will take place. Hans it is the meeting between these two and the german finance minister seems to have them all on the same page. There are two issues, one is with greeces ability to issue short term debt. Before, we thought they would not have to breach that limit until the summer. We learned last night some great reporting that february 25 is the new date. That means an immediate cash crunch. Last night we got an announcement from the ecb saying they would no longer accept greet that greek debt as collateral for ecb cash. That gives an indication that everyone is unified on the troika and the ecb will not allow access to greek banks because they have given every indication that they plan to leave the Bailout Program which technically ends at the end of the month. And away, the ecb has accelerated that program saying it is over now and if you want to leave the program you will not have access to the crucial funding. The Greek Finance Ministry seemed to put on a brave face and say the greek Banking System remains adequately capitalized and fully protected under emergency liquidity assistance. They continued to restate they are open and want this idea of social salvation. We dont know what greek bonds were doing, they were not trading. The euro did drop 1. 2 on this news. Anna it looks like the greek banks still have access to some ecb windows. They are pointing to the emergency liquidity assistance window. What is available and for how long . Hans they have ela access, back its reviewed every two weeks. The issue with ela, it is much more expendable. The rate is 1. 55 . The other rate they have been getting is. 05 . It has clearly increased the cost and could give them a taste for what is to come. Clearly we have a hardline out of the ecb that landed last night. Anna thank you very much, hans nichols our Bloomberg International correspondent. Mark the swiss watchmaker made the news after the Swiss National bank basically binned the swissfrank euro cap three weeks ago today. Fully operating profit, 1. 7 5 billion swiss francs. Analysts miss estimated 1. 9. It is an earnings miss. It is proposing a dividend of 7. 5 swiss francs per share. That is ahead of estimates. It is the high singledigit growth excluding currency shifts. It is the continued healthy profits. Several of the brands have raised things by five to 7 . It plans to add numerous Innovative Products this year. January sales were strong in local currency. The word local is the key there. No comment from swatch, from the headlines on the swiss franc. But the chief executive said everything that needed to be said to on january 15, when the central bank scratched the cap on the currency. Finally, for the entire country. The watchmaker also sees high singledigit growth excluding fx shifts and quoted exactly despite the highly overvalued swiss franc and at the same time earn continued healthy profits. Basically, 2015 has started very auspiciously. With a strong january and computed in local currency. Anna a pointed statement. Manus fact of the day. Lets look at some of the other stories we are following. Sony shares rose as much as 18 after posting its best quarterly profit in seven years. They make the image sensors that allow smartphones to take high quality selfies. The investigation which comes six years after the bank resolved a second Tax Evasion Case is said to focus on their securities. Anna more detail in the mobile sector as orange closes in on a sale of its ee mobile network. That is according to people familiar with the matter. Vodafone, through voter, reports its vodacom reports its thirdquarter earnings. Manus bill gates gave 1. 5 billion worth of microsoft stock to his foundation. The worlds richest man donated 31 million shares of the software maker. Decreasing his stake in the company he cofounded to just 3 . Mark they struck a deal with google to make twitter more searchable. Twitter will start appearing in google results as soon as there are posted thanks to giving the search giant direct access to its systems. They are generating more advertising revenue from a large audience. You can join the conversation on twitter. Tell us what you think of the show. We want to hear more about the stories you are following. At any tweets today . Anna a few of what is coming up on the program. After the break, why some are breathing a sigh of relief to see chip sales in china falling. Manus you are watching countdown and these are some of our top stories. Greece has lost a critical source of funding after the European Central bank removed loans to its central system. The new Prime Minister has encouraged people to stay the course on its program. Later today the greek finance minister will meet his german counterpart for talks. The owner of pizza hut and kfc has posted fourthquarter revenue that beat analyst estimates. Sales enter china have slid less than expected. Overall, the company had a net lot loss. Compared to the profit one year ago. Yum has been struggling to repair its prep reputation it are china after one of its vendors was allegedly wrote for using out of date meet. The flight that clashed in taipei the survey made a distress call after being given the goahead to take off. A male voice was heard saying, mayday mayday, engine flamed out. At least 31 people were killed. 15 of the 38 people survived. Mark our top story today, the greek Financial System is losing a critical source of funding. We are joined by the global head of economics. What is the ecb up to . What we are seeing here is a reminder that these negotiations would never be easy. We start from a point where greece was quite farrow far away from the troika program. There was a lot of optimism that we had the finance minister come over from london and tell us they are no longer asking for a debt writedown. I think a lot of optimism was spared by that but thats still not bring the parties that much closer together entre the economics. And my reading of yesterday is clearly were still far away from agreement on the economics. I think we have to remind ourselves that greek banks still have access to financing. What i am current concerned about is what this will do to confidence in greece and what could this put on the deposit outflow we are already seeing from greek banks. That is the immediate risk. The next risk is going into talks that will culminate on the 11th of february when leaders meet to discuss the plan. I think a grexit is a loselose situation but also not a risk we can ignore. We need to be aware and this is just a reminder to everyone that to the markets and policymakers that there are very serious questions opened. Anna if we are trying to work out when we see a cash crunch for greece, how do we do that . Lots of people are coming up with different dates of when this starts to hurt. How would you define a crucial cash crunch moment . Michala the key point is we have been here before. The question is which day do they run out of funding . They run out of funding the day the ecb no longer authorizes the greek centralbank to provide elas to the greek bank. That is the most critical day out there. Then we can discuss two bill insurance and how many can we issue, but it is really the ecb allowing that ela to go ahead anna the government said yesterday that we do still have this ela access. They have taken away the cheaper sort of funding. Michala the ecb emphasized that in its own communique. Clearly the ecb is making its clear and the greek banks to the extent they have other collateral are allowed to come to the ecbs window. This is a move directed to the greek government bonds and greek government guarantees. We have to distinguish those two things quite clearly. To my mind, it is a day that ecb says no more elas, that is when they believe the euro area. Manus that, you say, would have a bigger Geopolitical Impact akin to russia in day one of this governments administration. How concerned should we be that that is the kind of geopolitical posturing that might come out of this . Michala that is the lose lose situation. I strongly believe that it is in the interest of everyone that greece stays within the euro area. We have to remember, most importantly that while this government was democratically elected, the greek people give the message clearly that we want to stay in the euro. The tough challenge here is can we negotiate agreement. This gives some reason some hope in these negotiations there are a number of points in which the new c raza government syraza government would help. Reforming government, that has been a constant question. Getting rid of some of the oligarchs, something that the troika would like. Some of the things that are very much disliked reinstating minimum wages. Redistribution policies. Those are some of the toughest things in the negotiations. Mark michala will stay with us. No break. Michala apparently so. Mark lets talk about the bank of england. And of two date meeting, seems like nothing will happen today but with Interest Rate expectation moving further into the distance, do we need to stop worrying about a rate increase . Michala i dont think so and that is good news, not bad news. It is the same discussion where having on the fed. The rate hike would be an expression that we are confident that this is a robust recovery that the growth is there in the central bank is able to normalize. We are essentially normal rates. In my career, this is an exceptional situation. I can not believe we have 10 year yields in switzerland. This is uncharted territory. When we look at the Monetary Policy or the fed and bank of england, is the recovery Strong Enough . And should tightening take place before you have a strong acceleration in the headline Inflation Numbers . Probably yes if you want to secure a gradual have to normalization. There are a couple of areas to look at. One is the question on credit. If you start seeing credit accelerating, that is a good thing but you dont want it to happen too fast. Another is financial stability. You dont want to create a situation where the economy is growing robustly. You keep monetary addition so easy you end up spurring financial levels. A nominal situation be something very healthy and positive. That comes with a few issues around it. This is where the rest of the world comes in strongly. A concern we have had, is the asymmetries on Balance Sheets that can result from currency movement. Coming back from china, one of the big concerns is that china has significant volumes of dollar denominated debt. A lot of that is in the shortterm and when the fed does start to hike, some of that debt will come under pressure. That is the reason why china cannot join the lets deflate our neighbor rate. Anna do we entered the fed into the currency war . A lot of it is against the dollar but we were having a conversation about when the u. S. Says hang on a second. Michala i see a little bit of a paradox in the u. S. , but i also see the very low Interest Rate environment of being a result of the shrinkingdollar economy. We are getting this pull coming down from the rest of the world on u. S. Bond yields. On the one hand the stronger dollar could be said to delay, but keep in mind that the dollar effect is much less than the euro economy. But at the same time bond yields are so low that you could argue it should force the fed to tighten less. Mark i think that is it, nicola michala. Thank you very much for joining us. Anna coming up, claims that the ubs is being investigated about whether it helped americans invaded tax. Manus welcome back to town down. Time to check how countdown. Time to check now what is trending. You have a clear definition here of what is selling at this time. Japanese yen does not know what it wants to do but dx why is what we use or the dollar dxy is what we use for the dollar. We just caught up with michala one of the chief economists saying the fed should move earlier. The chairman of Berkshire Hathaway says go to bloomberg, you will see the article there. Michala says do it now. Very tough is what Warren Buffett actually says. That risk still exists in terms of the debt market. That is the dollar backdrop. That sets the tenor for where we are in terms of the unemployment report which is tomorrow. Now, what is going on with the euro. The European Central bank says we will not allow week sovereign bonds as collateral anymore. You have to go to your own banks. There has been a little bit of reprieve. It is germany day. I am seeing notes that say anything that moves back up to 150, any kind of correction in the eurodollar is an opportunity to consider your shortterm trader as a cell opportunity. The volatility in this currency and this caught my eye this morning. Price swings are at the highest level since 2011. That is what is driving the eurodollar market. That is the critical issue. If qe doesnt take the euro lower, what will greece do . You saw the dollar rise and the real fall. What you have here is again moving toward strong u. S. Federal reserve. Petrobras, you saw the ceo and five senior positions resign. Growth was cut yesterday and inflation was raised. So the brazilian riel starts to trade today. Back to you. Anna these are the top stories this morning. Greece has lost a critical source of funding after the European CentralBank Restricted loans to its Financial System. They put financial pressure to stay the course on the Bailout Program. Later today the greek finance minister will meet his german counterpart for talks. Bnp reports its lowest annual profit in history and it is because of a fine from the u. S. Last year. They pleaded guilty by processing almost 9 billion in trouble and transactions. The lender says it is taking remedial action. Zimbabwes aging president took a fall after speaking at the airport in the capital terry and his aides quickly helped him up. He turns 91 late of this month and had just returned from ethiopia where he was asked elected chairman. Mark the gas Company Released earnings yesterday. The company says the revenues could fall to as low as 2. 2 billion in 2000 14. Bruno joins us now on the phone. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you and good morning. I believe there is a strong backlog, we have a 1. 8 billion backlog 64 should translate into a breaking cash flow. We are in a strong position for a bad time in the industry. Mark how long do you think this bad time in the industry could last . Are you preparing for a sustained low Oil Price Environment . Bruno it is difficult to say. The onl