There is bouygues up 2. 7 on the open. Lets talk to ryan. Royal dutch shell, these are the guys that started the profit war at the start of the year. They smashed expectations. For 5ts were looking billion. Investors very pleased. It will be interesting to hear what the boss has to say on his conference call. Everybody wants to hear about russia. A very sizable interest in russia. One reason why van burton was meeting with putin, kissing the ring if i might say. We heard president putin yesterday warning that there could be retaliatory moves against western interests if they ratchet up their sanctions. He said he may have to look at western energy deals in russia. We can see Royal Dutch Shell up over 3 . Alstom we are waiting. I am getting excited about alstom. It was called up 20 . Lets have a look at another stock, barclays. Everybody is doing it. It is a bad bank. The commodities business, the fixed income business, some u. S. Mortgage assets and european lending books in spain and italy. 54 billion euros worth of risk weighted assets. Alstom up 11. 8 . We called it 20 , it was up 12 . Pretty good. Lets have a look at heritage oil. We have another deal on the table. We are keeping that in focus. Qatars al miqrab agrees to buy heritage oil for 1. 5 billion. 224 Million Pounds if you prefer. Enough enter out of me. Lets talk to johnnie. Cpi on the way. Are you bothered at all about u. S. Gdp . I am bothered about the fed. There is this big logistical problem where we still havent got those two governors concerned by the senate. Jeremy stein steps down at the end of may. By june, we may just have three governors. Just going to give you the gdp for spain. We have gdp rising by 0. 4 for spain. Retail sales coming in at 0. 6 . You are fully armed. I am excited for the euro. I will give it a go. Ftse 100 closing close to a twomonth high yesterday. We are expecting a pullback this morning. Cac 40, 0. 2 . The dax opening in frankfurt almost 0. 1 . Let me show you a little bit of dollar yen. Coming down by 0. 2 . You see that again gaining by 0. 2, the dollar falling by 0. 2. On the forecast, they trimmed their forecast for growth this year. The forecast for inflation completely unchanged. The central bank really isnt giving anything away. Elsewhere, this will be the talk of the town. Euro dollar coming back around 1. 38. The ecb has done everything necessary. The euro pushing a bit higher. Yesterday german inflation came back a bit weaker than expected. Today is the big one. It is the headline number. We are expecting it to go to 0. 8 . Some people think it may undercut that. Does that pile on the pressure at the ecb . He doesnt look like a man who is going to have any action in an eminent fashion. Comings are that qe is but that really is a big bet against mario draghi. Back to you. Thanks. One company that we mentioned during the opening was alstom. Shares had been suspended since last friday after bloomberg broke the story that ge would pursue a takeover of the french company. Now we know that alstom is and has approved official talks with ge. Siemens prepares perhaps a full counteroffer. Editor, david tweed is standing by in berlin. Offering 17 billion for this Energy Business. What do we have so far . First of all, ge is offering 17 billion for the Energy Business. , thenteresting thing is Energy Business is the business of servicing those of equipment thater it has already installed. Apparently the margins on that are double ges general margins. Ge says this is going to be accretive to earnings immediately. There are other bits that stand out to me. General electric has also said growth would see net job in the business is that it buys. General electric is trying to overcome resistance from the french government, particularly from the industry minister who described the fact that General Electric went to alstom without consulting the french government as a breach of national ethics. It is going to be difficult for siemens to make the same sort of promise when it comes to the transport business and jobs guarantees. Ken siemens guarantee jobs for more than 10 years . Lets talk about the other option, that is siemens. There is a lot of play here. Siemens want access to information before they would make any kind of an offer. One can understand those kind of parameters. You can certainly understand why siemens wants to get information on the finances of one of its biggest competitors. Alstom has said it will provide that information to siemens. I think they are under pressure to do that. One of the things i think is interesting here is that siemens says it will take four weeks to evaluate that information before it goes ahead and takes a bit. Putom has said that it has a board of independent directors who will make a decision on june 2. Both of those take us well after the european elections. Certainly an interesting morning for m a. Stay with us. After the break, we are going to go deeper with ge. Am manus cranny in london and this is on the move streaming online, on your phone, on apple tv and the new amazon fire tv. Shell profit fell 3 on higher cost reduction. , letsse numbers and check in with Ryan Chilcote. Talk me through the numbers. The numbers were good despite that fall in profit year on year. The numbers came in well above expectations at 7. 3 billion profit for the First Quarter. Analysts were looking for 5 billion. That is why the stock is up. Much better than what the street was looking for. You mentioned russia, shell has big interests in russia. That is one reason then then meetingas in russia with president putin, telling him how important russia is to shell. Shell has a plant in the far east. It is a venture that they are rom on and with gazp it is very important to them. They want to up the capacity by 50 to give the asian markets all the gas that they want. When he was there, he won president putins endorsement of that project. We heard president putin yesterday saying if sanctions against wretch a against russia keep getting ratcheted up, he may have to take a look again at those contract with western energy companies. Talk to me about shells position in ukraine. They dont have a whole lot better now but they are looking. In particular for gas in the east of the country. They agreed with the Central Government that they will look for it there. Unfortunately that is exactly where the separatist are active right now. We saw that with those prorussian militia yesterday seizing that government building in lujan scott. Sk. In luhan one of the places they want to look is a city called slovyan sk where those observers are being held by the separatists right now. Shell looking not only at ukraine, but for the moment there is not a whole lot they can do. Obviously all these oil companies, they are used to geopolitical risk. I dont think anyone saw this kind of risk in this particular part of the world. Thanks for those roundups, Ryan Chilcote with an insight into shell. To put this news flow in perspective, head of investments who oversees 4. 2 billion. Thank you for joining us. I like what you said to me when you sat down. These markets are like hotel california. Explain. You have seen the s p surge between 1840 and 1890. You are not seeing a real breakout on either side. There is enough Bank Capacity and you will have the gdp number coming in this afternoon you dont expect the number to be very good because it is 21 which is impacted by weather. Does that hold the market back . Earnings in the u. S. Are ahead. 10 to 12 higher than europe. Maybe america is pacing ahead. Number. Aw the q4 gdp the q1 number is probably going to be around 1. 1 . If you look at the data, we are seeing a very positive momentum. We will have the adp number which i think is more important. Pmi and the friday jobs report become very important. Talk to me a little bit about a in europe. T m there is deal after deal. We have got pharma deals, industrial deals. Is this the beginning of a bigger cycle . M a cycle iss, the catching up. The pharma sector is focused as we have seen. Has a very good run and you see a correction. You are talking about pharma comingstocks which are into new age drugs. People who suffered from leukemia a few years back had a survival rate of one third. Now it is 90 . You are talking about new age. Rugs you will see a lot of these things happening. Manager,investment maybe you have some exposure to glaxo, whatever. Do you begin to eat say to yourself, if i havent got exposure in these other names, i should begin to add that into the portfolio . We have investments in novartis. A balance between biotech and old name for a companies. That is how i manage portfolios. M a in europe is also going to catch up. You are going to see not very strong gdp growth or a lack of growth that we have seen. You will see companies merging together to increase their profitability, to hit their return on equity target. There could be more deals in europe. Yourself . You position is it a shorterterm perspective . Industries, do i begin to cherry pick Industry Groups where i think the value is . You pick stocks, you still pick good businesses. You position yourself with the cycle. Financials, tech, industrials, these are still the names i would like to hold. Europe this year has not done very well. The second half is where we are going to see some performance. You had a lot of earnings this week. We will have more next week. Review the asset quality and setting up targets to see the banks fail the target or come through the target. There are various things happening in europe. Are all the generic issues that we are very well aware of. How do i position myself for 2014 if qe comes in the later part of the year . If there are rate cuts here in europe . Where do i want to be exposed to take advantage of that . Do i buy banks, do i buy cyclicals, do i buy retail . Where am i going to get that value . Financials is my big bet. Even though they have not done aty well, i would look pharmaceuticals like novartis. Not a huge amount of industrial names. Energy didnt do very well last year. We just had shell numbers this morning. Youf i go back to u. S. , have all the Energy Stocks which have done extremely well. Energy stocks are doing extremely well. It is the rotation. It is not like money leaving. It is rotating from one sector to the other. Were going to have to leave it there. Great to get your opinion. Manish singh, great to have you with us. , top shop once again. The latest collection hits stores today. Caroline hyde gives us a sneak peak. Again, the british powerhouse of retail has teamed up with a british style icon, kate moss. [no audio] i will be back with how the Business Model is going at top shop. Welcome back to on the move. I am manus cranny in london. Here are some companies that are on the move. Dyer is said to be proposing a deal for mercks consumer business. Dyer is trying to beat an allcash bid. A heated contest between the bidders means that mark may fetch more than 14 billion in a sale of the unit, well over early estimates. Barclays is said to be moving its Commodities Division into bad bank of unwanted assets. The unit will be overseen by eric bommensath, cohead of the corporate and investment banking. Those familiar with the deal say bommensath will oversee the business that the firm has designated part of its exit quadrant. Bnp paribas beat estimate analysts. The chief Financial Officer spoke to bloomberg about the impact of rising tensions in russia and ukraine. We took a collective position for the uncertainty. I do not think there is a Snowball Effect but we will have to keep monitoring the situation. Another company we are watching is daimler. Ofis the thirdlargest maker luxury vehicles that reported a 95 surge in firstquarter profits. Demand, models such as mercedesbenz cla. Hans nichols, a man who knows a thing or two about luxury, cars, german cars. 95 , that is a cracking First Quarter lift, isnt it . It has that new car smell which i know you know. You always go to show rims and try out all these cars. You never drive off the lot with one but i know you like your cars. Is important that because the margins are so high on that s class. Great numbers, a 15 surge in deliveries. You compare that with their competitors. Lets do the geeky numbers. 1. 79 billion. Estimates were for 1. 71 billion. About 80 Million Euros higher. Revenue up to almost 30 billion euros on the quarter 30 Million Euros on the quarter. The goal is 10 . When you look at their growth in china, you see why some of these numbers are so strong. Because of sales, because of demand in china. Look at the number of dealerships they want to own. 100 new dealerships in china. They already have 400 outlets. A lot of this growth is suvdriven. In china, that is the big vehicle they want. In 2013 in 2009, 37 and 40 in 2019. I was going to pose this question to francine. Are you an suv man or a convertible man . I was in a bmw showroom the ,ther day and strangely enough this would be a shock to everybody, it wasnt an suv. It was a twoseater sports car for me. Closed roof or open roof . Open all the way. I am not in the new car market. I cant afford it. You will have to sell one of your Country Estates but then you wont have anywhere to drive to. [laughter] we will see you in a short while. Coming up, talks are official between ge and alstom. The french train maker is keeping its options open. Follow me on twitter. Welcome back to on the move. I am manus cranny at bloombergs European Headquarters in london. We are 30 minutes into the trading day. Equity markets despite all the news flowing through this morning, equity markets coming out of little bit lower. We are waiting for the european cpi data to come a little bit later today. 0. 8 , that is going to be that of signing issue for the European Central bank. We are also waiting on chinese purchasing managers data. And the bank of japan didnt have any news. There is a couple of Things Holding the markets back. We are ready for gdp numbers in the amended states as well. Ok, those are markets. Lets give you some of the top headlines. The bank of japan refrained from adding extra stimulus. It sees the pace of inflation picking up over the next two years. Consumer prices will rise 2. 1 in the fiscal year starting april 26. Up from 1. 3 in the current year. To overtakesed the u. S. As the Worlds Largest economy according to calculations that take Exchange Rates into account. India bumped japan out of the thirdplace spot. The collaboration of groups between the u. N. And imf issued the report. The ecb Vice President says that lenders are preemptively boosting capital ratios to reduce the risk of failing a Balance Sheet review. He told bloomberg that some of the measures have been spectacular. We estimate based only on Public Information that the banks since july of last year have strengthened their Balance Sheets through several measures to an amount of 104 billion euros. It is official. Ge has bid 17 billion for alstoms energy assets. It is a story we have been following closely since Matt Campbell broke the story last week. He joins me now for the latest. Stage moving into a new of this whole story. It is official, ge have laid the price at the door and they are preparing to negotiate. But there is still a little asterix next to this deal which is siemens putting together an alternative bid that seemed to be getting support from the french government. There is a fourweek negotiation period between ge and alstom basically as a compromise and to demonstrate to the government and shareholders that alstom is considering this alternative. Siemens will still be able to bid in that period. This is not necessarily a done deal for jeffrey immelt. Politically he knows his way around france. He has been at the negotiating table before. Of doing business in france is incredibly important to this deal. This was a very close run thing in the end. The story came out a little earlier than ge and alstom were intending thanks to journalists of course. The french government made some very negative noises about this basically saying this is not acceptable. That was quite rapidly walked back come monday morning with the presidency saying, actually we are neutral. We just want to make sure jobs are protected. Au have got a little bit of window in the space of just a couple of days into the competing agendas and views within the ruling socialist party. When you see the news this morning from ge talking about what they are prepared to do and offer. Do you think this is the beginning of a major month of justification in the public arena . They have to go and sell this. This is obviously a deal with big pr angles. Alstom is one of these brands that everyone in france knows. It is something that is very familiar and a real icon of french technology. That part is staying behind. Ge is separating energy, which is about 70 to 80 of alstoms revenues and creating a new company, alstom transport which will be the rump Energy Business. This does take some selling. This is both a financial offensive, but there also has to be a continuing political and pr offensive. In between you coming ,ownstairs and sitting down alstom is ambitious for energy and transport, again, we are in for a month of quite retracted negotiation, arent we . We are. Something i think is interesting about this is, the socialist party in france has always had a bit of a business wing. There are socialist party bankers and chief executives and board members. What we are seeing is the business wing saying, maybe if we are going to get a Huge Investment from ge, we shouldnt say no. Then you have the left of the socialist party saying, actually we would like to put this together at the governmental level. I have no doubt that you are going to be a busy man. Well done. We will probably see you on a daily basis. Our twitters birds flying the coop . The stock gets slammed at the close of trade. The big question is about the followers. W