We are going to start in athens. Eurogroup president jerome is set to meet greeces new government for the first time later today. It is a story that everybody is watching. We are trying to work out whether there is a mandate. We will talk about that in just a moment. Lets talk about sanctions on russia. This is also part and parcel of the greek story at the moment. Increasing violence in eastern ukraine. We are watching the story very carefully. There is talk of more individual stories here potentially more visa bans. Ryan chilcote is on the ground in brussels. What have you been hearing from the Foreign Ministers . Effectively, what theyve done is kick the can up to their bosses. February 12, the heads of state gather here in brussels. What the Foreign Ministers did last night was agreed to expand the black list of individuals subject to travel bans and asset freezes and also extend some sanctions that were imposed right after crimea was annexed. Those are sanctions light. One to 10, 10 being the worst possible sanctions regime you could imagine, with iran at eight or nine, russia is a four now maybe 4. 25 depending who is on that list. The eu leaders when they get together, they could take it to a six, theoretically. Some of the division we saw yesterday, that led to us not getting new sanctions leads one to believe that that would be pretty tough. Also, come july maybe there will be some issues on rolling over the existing sanctions. The interesting people to watch yesterday were the greeks. There was concern that they were going to come in and blow up the whole sanctions process. One foreign minister told me they were kind of destructive. So you spoke to the new Greek Foreign minister. What did he have to say . You know, he doesnt want to be perceived and maybe isnt the person that hes been portrayed in the last couple of days. He has been portrayed as this prorussian eu sanctions spoiler. In fact, he says he is much more pragmatic. The reason why they are opposed to new sanctions against russia is for entirely pragmatic reasons. Have a listen. We dont like to see [indiscernible] we dont like to have a rift between European Union and russia. [indiscernible] that is the reason why we accept that the existing sanctions can run untold september of 2015. We are not against every kind of sanctions. We have been against new sanctions today. What is most extraordinary is, after that statement on tuesday, where they objected to the eu even calling this meeting and complaining about the calling of this meeting, he was really the actively trying to distance himself from this image as a prorussian defender of russias interest. He said he had only been to russia twice. You and i talked about that picture where he appears next to a russian nationalist. He says he was just walking down the steps. One of the students asked him suppose with the other people. He didnt necessarily know them. That russian nationalist had been invited by the university. He said he didnt think the russians could offer a whole lot of financial assistance. He said greece hasnt asked and the russians hasnt offered. This was a guy that went out of his way to dispel the perceptions that have been formed about him over the last couple days. He said that he tells his colleagues in the new Greek Foreign ministry that he doesnt recognize the man described in news reports. I will tell you this, he does strike me as the guy who is going to shake up the European Union. Not necessarily because of russia. They could pretty much end the sanctions regime. He did describe himself from a small country that is on its knees. I get the impression every single time he comes to brussels hes going to let us know what he things about everything. It is going to be interesting to watch. Ryan, thanks very much indeed. That was the Greek Foreign minister. Lets talk a little about the greek finance minister. Eurogroup president Jeroen Dijsselbloem set to him drive in athens later. Lets talk about that. Lets talk to bloombergs Athens Bureau chief. Good morning to you, nikos. We are not quite sure what his mandate is from the rest of the eurogroup. What are we expecting from this initial conversation . It is sort of the official kickoff of negotiations between greece and its creditors. The new government does not accept the current bailout agreement as a basis for negotiations. In fact, the greek Prime Minister, alexis tsipras, will lay out his plans for the replacement of the current bailout agreement with a concurrent growth plan focused on combating tax evasion and corruption. It will include no privatizations, no further fiscal measures. Will it fly with dijsselbloem . We will find out later today, i guess. Judging by the first reactions the chances are slim. Yes. Mr. Dijsselbloem saying there is little support for any change in the current terms for some sort of bailout for greece. Is there a genuine believe in athens within the government that they can negotiate a deal . You get this impression that both sides are still a long way apart. Yes, they seem to be miles apart. The greek government says the bailout agreement has failed miserably, that it exacerbated the steepest and longest recession on record and theres just no way for the Greek Society to continue accepting austerity measures and tightening measures any longer. Disjsselbloem and greeces creditors say there is no way to for greece to escape from its commitments. So, we are here in london trying to figure out and scratching our heads, why mr. Varafakas is coming to london next week. I would have thought that he be touring the euro area rather than coming to london. Can you give us any insight in that . It is an odd choice. What is for certain is that the finance minister said that he will meet the city executives without specifying who and mr. Osborne. Then, he will meet his counterpart, and then to rome where he will meet his italian counterpart the choice of london to start his European Tour is a bit strange. I get that he wants to start making alliances. The interlocutory in berlin are not very friendly. They are trying to make alliances elsewhere. Interesting point. Nice to see you. We will have more a little bit later on. Lets get a market perspective on this. I wonder if our next guest will be part of that conversation. Peter joins us now. Good morning. Good morning to you. How much credit risk is there in the greek bond market . There is plenty. If you look at what the market is pricing, relative to the other markets that had a credit problem in the last, it is miles apart. How seriously should we take the concerns that we are heading for an accident here . That face says it all. Everybodys assuming there is a risk. Nobody will say that risk is real. Everybody expects some sort of meeting of minds in the middle. One of your colleagues earlier said the crucial word pragmatic. How pragmatic is the new government in athens going to be . If we strip away all the politics and look at the hard numbers, the greek government has before the election said that they will renegotiate some of the publicly held that. If you look at that and look at the cost that this part of the debt bears, it is tiny. Even if you have a significant drag down of the budget this yields very little giveaway. That, for me, is the crux of the matter. Will the push for this, which will not go down well for the partners where does greece improve its solvencys . Lets keep solvency to the side. For me, the crucial issue, lets focus on what the government wants. They want to spend more money. They can negotiate something on the bailout terms if they choose. They have to find cash they can spend. Here is where europeans potentially have something they can offer. They have a surplus on the noninterest part of the budget. Even if you go into these negotiations, when you picture, what can this guy bring to the table, theres a few things the europeans could do that could lower the interest burden that greece has even further. That is real cash that potentially can be spent. That is something, if the greek government engages with european partners, where i can see a tangible outcome that yields tangible results. But only in my opinion, that is only possible in conjunction with the europeans, not against them. So the tone has to be right. We also have a few little repayment humps in the private sector coming up. You get to august, it starts to get more lumpy. The ecb has to hear a decent tone coming out of athens to let that happen as well. How much of a sort of hanging over these negotiations is that . I think it is a serious one. These are repayments that greece will have to honor unless they are going into default. What we also know, is if something happens that is not going their way, one of the threats hanging over the economy is the greek banks. If the greek assets are not being accepted as collateral the greek banks have serious trouble. Here, again, they have an incentive in negotiating with the europeans. I think these repayments can well be managed in conjunctionk with the international partners, the european partners. But if you just choose to play hardball, it is going to be tough. Peter, stay with us. Peter schaffirk head of research at rbc. He will be with us to carry on this conversation. We will also be talking about qatar. Qatar airways taking a stake in iag. The gulf airline has taken a near 10 stake. We have details up next. Good morning. Welcome back. Qatar airways has bought a 9. 9 stake in iag, Parent Company of British Airways. The company says it may raise its stake further in the future. Iags willie walsh says he is delighted to have Qatar Airways as a shareholder. For more now, Kari Lundgren joins us. Good morning. Why . Big news. It is an interesting move by qatar. Unexpected. I was expecting Something Else this morning. It is something that you might have seen in the relationship that qatar and British Airways have developed ongoing since 2013. Willie walsh, the ceo of iag, was very involved in getting qatar into one world. That may be one element of it. They have a lot of respect for one another. Al bakar says wonderful things about willie. Qatar actually has a holding in heathrow airport. Maybe it is just consolidating their position a little bit. Ask does it change the operation . It will be interesting to see how they Work Together. Qatar says that both airlines were fairly limited. They said it was about leveraging flows and working together and improving their partnership. I think in the shortterm, it wont change anything operationally. You have to look at qatars position in the middle east. They are looking for ways to expand. They are all trying to do different things. Etoihad has gone down this route. Hogan has bought a bunch of stakes. Is this them just taking one stake . I think he would say that this is different than what etihad is doing. Each of these airlines tries to forge their own path. This is about the relationship with iag. You talk about heathrow. Willie is looking to buy a slot at heathrow. Youve now got this new airport in doha are as well. You have two major hubs now. How does that fit together . We will have to see if they get it in the first place. I was watching a hearing yesterday from the Irish Government hearing on this. The shares were tanking. The things that were said in that hearing made you think that maybe the government is not going to favor a deal. Having said that, this will put aig iag in a strong tradition. They have the third runway out of dublin. Then they would have this partner in the middle east. Willy has always been of the sort of, if you cant beat them, join them cap. While left anza and air france have said negative things about the middle east carriers, willy has said, they are there to stay, they are strong, they are wellpositioned and develop a relationship rather than fighting it. Thank you very much indeed Kari Lundgren. We are going to take a break. Welcome back. You are watching the pulse. Still with us, rbcs head of fixed income head of economics, let me get that right. Lets take a look at the eurodollar. Just to give us a heads up in this conversation. We are waiting for the inflation data to come out. 0. 5 negative is the expecti ation. This is the channel by which draghi wants this to work. He has a negative number, he has to get that up. When you look at your will dollar at 1. 13, what is the trade . First of all, i think it is not the only channel that the ecb wants this to work, but one of the channels. The other would be reducing yields even further. In terms of the eurodollar itself, if you look at various metrics that are available, the euro probably already is cheap. Given what is happening, there is every chance that the risk premium continues to increase driving eurodollar further down. That is quite possible. Other trades that we like what this does is said negative yields and all the money that the ecb will be pushing into the market, is pushing it even further down. And then, even further out, we get to see what that does to the real risky assets. It is probably positive. But youve got to be much more selective here as weve just illustrated. That money that is going into equities, there is a natural bid for bond markets in europe. Banks have to hold this up. It is part and parcel of the way they are structured. Who will be in and who will be out . Ecb is buying a big chunk of this stuff. Absolutely. Theres quite a lot of people who have to hold fixed income. Thats not going to change. In part, theyve got the bite the bullet and face lower yields. We hear complaints out of northern europe. Thats just the way it is. In a way, that is how we carry the debt we have for quite a while. But who is going to rotate out of that . That is the crucial question. Theres more allowance being made for overseas investment other markets outside the euro area and theres incremental change in allowances for other assets. If you look at infrastructure financing these type of things that have higher yields, but probably more liquidity. Interesting to see how the bonds work. Do the danes maintain their peg . We think they will. Weve seen a huge step yesterday when they cut interest rates. Theres probably other elements they can take. I think there is every chance that they maintain the peg. Peter schaffrik joining us from rbc capital markets. Stay with us. Up next, we are talking about amazon. Later, we are talking about the super bowl ads you can expect to see this weekend. Welcome back. You are watching the pulse. We are live from bloombergs European Headquarters in london. Eu Foreign Ministers are meeting in brussels. Theyve given the goahead to prepare new sanctions against russia for it involvement in ukraine. Russias ambassador to the eu told bloomberg the sanctions against his country arent having the desired effect on president clintons calculations. President putins c alculations. They may be having an effect on both sides in the economic area, but not politically. The pilots of air asia flight 8501 cut power to a Computer System shortly before the aircraft plunged into the java sea. That is according to people with knowledge of the situation. This triggered events that led to the climb so steep that it stalled and then crashed. All 162 people on board were killed. The u. S. Senate has passed a bill to approve the keystone xl pipeline. The vote sets up a conflict between republicans and president obama, who has promised a veto. He wants to rate until a review of the pipeline is completed before making a decision on approval. Lets find out what is happening with the markets. Jonathan ferro. Thank you very much, guy. Dont let the color of this map deceive you. There are losses but they are minimal. The dax doing nothing in frankfurt. Here in london, the ftse 100 is off by 0. 5 . The big story, Qatar Airways taking that 9. 9 stake in iag. That will make them the companys largest shareholder. I want to show you what athens is doing. Stocks in athens, a little bit higher after the brutal selloff in the first three days of this week. The banks got pummeled. Alpha bank up by 7 . They are basically penny stocks jumping up and down. Im going to talk to you about greek Government Debt in about an hour. Stay tuned for that. Yields are lower. Off by 34 34 basis points, rather. In a little bit of time, we get a big piece of data. Eurodollar, lower. 1. 1321 is where we are right now. Inflation data expected at 0. 5 , the lowest since the summer of 2009. Elsewhere, dollarruble, here is a cross to watch. Stronger dollar, weaker ruble. That is a record low for the ruble on a closing basis. 69, approaching 70 ahead of a big centralbank decision at 10 30 u. K. Time. Rates 17 . I leave you with that. Bit of a punchy number. Jon, we will manage those for you as we work our way through the day. Lets turn to attack now. Investors cheered amazons sales. Once again, there is evidence of Tech Companies investing in their future. Here with more, caroline hyde. People happy with the amazon numbers, which have been volatile of late. This is a Company Pushing aggressively as it has done historically, putting the money back into the business. And still, investors are buying into jeff results vision. Youve got to splash the cash to do that. My a euphoria in the market after these numbers. 12 rise after hours in terms of share price. 200 million profit. 18 billion from apple. But they are getting 29 billion of sales. They are managing to spend most of it. They are still believing that amazon is no longer an online retailer. It is also a media company, a software company, a consumer hardware company. It is not just ebay. It is netflix. It is time warner. It is microsoft. It is everyone. They want to see them spend as long as they still by the vision. What they like in the numbers is the fact that people are willing to go premium with amazon. 53 uptick in those buying amazon prime. Not only do you get the video content, you get your deliveries quicker. They dont mind when jeff bezos is saying i want to invest in getting the package is there farther. I want to invest in drones, in content. Woody allen and the like. This is an interesting area. They are going to separate that type of the business. It is amazon web services. It has become a juggern