Companies trying to figure out their hr was stopped first, i want to get to matt miller in new york looking at some top headlines. Matt on the east coast, a deliberate act to destroy the airplane. A Prosecutor Says black box recording shows the copilot on the flight locks the pilot out of the cockpit and then flew the plane into the french alps. The ceo of german wings a few hours after having heard this we can only speculate on the motivational the copilot. I would like to very cautiously say this is by far the most terrible event in our company. Matt bryce robin identified the copilot as a junior pilot who started flying in 2013. He passed all of his tests and was fit to fly. Saudi arabia and its sunni allies have launched airstrikes in yemen which at the airport and a nearby military base in the capitol. This comes as rebels advance on the port city which is the stronghold of the embattled president. The yemeni president has arrived in riyadh. The strike sent oil prices higher, hitting their highest price in more than a month with new york crude well over 50 a barrel. In iraq, the u. S. Has joined the offensive against Islamic State militants in tikrit, conducting 17 air strikes against targets after staying out of the offensive for weeks. The iraqis had been relying on help from iran to dislodge the militants from the city, but there defensive has stalled. And the Omega Advisors hedge fund has received a federal subpoena from the u. S. Attorneys office in new jersey. The sec is seeking information on trading. In a letter to investors, they say the inquiries that are at an early stage. Omega said to be cooperating and is confident employees acted properly and lawfully. Shares of sandisk are getting crushed, down the most since 2010. The company cut its revenue forecast citing lower prices and slowing sales from business products. Revenue is down 100 million from an earlier projection. Now back to our special coverage of the ellen pao trial. It could have a dramatic impact on Silicon Valleys culture. Cory johnson is outside the courthouse in San Francisco. Cory this is a case everyone in Silicon Valley is watching. It is a case that may affect businesses all over the country. The jury is deliberating now behind me in the courthouse. Lets look at the case and talk about what was presented. Im joined by two experts. Bill is in new york. Let me start with you. You have been following this case and listening to what they have to say on the stand. What do you make of this . Janine it is a tough case. Usually when you have a case litigated like this, it is a tough case. The fact that there is so much at stake on either side ellen pao is risking her reputation and her career. Kleiner perkins is risking the trials and tribulations that come with the pr and obviously the money. The fact they are going to the mat and doing it on trial shows it is not a clearcut situation. Cory what do you make of what has been presented thus far . Which direction do you think the jury might be leaning . Bill it is difficult to say. When you try cases, youre always trying to gauge what the juror means. But what has happened here is ellen pao portrayed a matter of men behaving badly, not only with respect to promotions, but also with regard to raunchy discussions and inappropriate conduct, excluding women from coming to different social events. On the other hand, Kleiner Perkins is portraying her as someone who was ok, but not at the level of making the big money and it was her skills and personality that caused her not to get where she wanted to go and shes looking for a handout. But based on the information that has been provided, its going to be hard for this jury not to hold them accountable, at least in respect to retaliation because things went down when she complained. Cory talk to me about what you think were the most compelling things in the trial . I have read a lot. Janine what i was listening to the closing arguments, you cannot escape the fact that just looking at the performance reviews, the critiques about her are the same critiques asserted against the male partners will stop looking at her performance, the success of her investments you have critiques leveled at her that are applied differently versus the men and her investments do well, so its hard to not focus on that and think there might be a different standard. Lets start with some specific things brought up in this trial the exclusion from a trip there was an accusation that someone said to bring her along would be a buzzkill. Was that strong evidence . I think all of those jenin comments, you can say they are taken out of context. For me, they are not persuasive because people are disputing it. The most compelling evidence was looking at performance reviews and looking at her success. Cory they really did not have a policy or could not find a policy about equal opportunity and harassment. Is that damming evidence, or does that show they didnt have a policy so they did not know what rules they were breaking . Bill the Supreme Court has addressed this. If you have a policy and the follow it, you are going to be in trouble, but not having a policy shows a workplace that doesnt really make sure the right thing is done for everybody. Thats going to be a negative. In terms of the question you just asked before, by bringing in exclusion from different social events and things that men discuss on airplanes, this is designed to tug at the heartstrings of the jury and have these people, some of them are bluecollar types, put themselves in her position. There is an emotional factor that comes out if they believe her and i think that is important for what they are trying to present. Cory one of her worst days on the stand was when she had to discuss the sexual affair she had with a married partner at the firm. Does that hurt her case or does that show is a crazy place where rules dont apply . Janine i think that incident, like so many others, they can go either way. Her argument is the guy told me he was separated and or divorced, and that was the premise i operated on, whereas the defense turned around and said she is immoral, having an affair with a married man. Same fact, different spin. Cory maybe not convincing either way. This is a firm where, venture firms have gone from 10 women to 6 as of late and Kleiner Perkins 20 of the people there are women. Does that have any bearing . Kleiner certainly made a big deal of it. Janine the defense has used it very well to support their case. Its obviously a good thing. Some of the women were not investment partners. They were operational, they were recruiters, which is important but not the same as the people on the front line making the investments. Cory thank you very much. Speaking of women, news about googles hiring of the new chief Financial Officer who left morgan stanley, 70 million reasons why. She is getting a new salary, and 5 million in a signing bonus, and the remainder of 64 million in Stock Options that will fully vest the end of next year. Googles new chief Financial Officer, we are going to keep looking at this case for the rest of this hour. Matt coming up, full coverage of ellen pao versus Kleiner Perkins. We await the decision in the case that has rocked Silicon Valley. Plus the next big lawsuit facing the likes of twitter, facebook and tax diversity agenda how does this case affect the next batch of recruits . All that over the next hour. First a check of the top headlines will a new smartphone help htc and its sales slump . They will start taking orders for their new flagship smart phone. Once a smartphone brand has gone negative quarter over quarter as we did in 2013, which was a tough year for us, it never rebounded. A lot of people wrote htc off, but we dug deep and now we are reeling off quarter after quarter of profitable growth. We are bullish about our prospects this year. Matt htcs Global Market share has slumped to less than 2 from double digits back in 2011. One reason for the decline has been apple and now apple is starting an iphone tradein program in china. The program may launch a soon as next week. Foxconn will be involved in the program, buying and reselling the iphone will stop a Similar Program has helped boost iphone sales here in the u. S. The ncaa basketball tournament the sweet 16 action. Undefeated kentucky is taking on West Virginia in cleveland, ohio and North Carolina against wisconsin. Through the first week of eternal event, john donahoe has been leading bloombergs brackets for a cause, followed by jimmy dunn and bruce richards. Lets head back now to San Francisco where the jury is deliberating in the ellen pao case. Cory the ellen pao case has resonated because Silicon Valley looks at itself as being different, playing without a rulebook but what does that mean when you get into trouble for breaking the rules . Thats an issue that affects a lot of companies beyond Kleiner Perkins. David lewis joins us now. Hes with a Company Called operations incorporated. The company focuses on human resources. Glad to have you with us today. Talk about the modern state of hr operations for Small Businesses. As vast as the influence is, what is the stateoftheart for Small Companies right now . David stateoftheart as you have a policy manual, some kind of training associated with how to enforce the rules and then provide some level of consistency for everybody within the organization. Honestly that is not common in most Small Businesses. Most Small Businesses view hr as a Necessary Evil and treated as an administrative function until an event like this happens and then they wake up and react to it. Cory specifically when you look at this case, one of the most glaring examples was they could not find their policy about discrimination. What do you see as the worst thing kleiner might have done in this case . Its very typical of the Small Business as it relates to the arrogance that the rules are not necessarily there to apply to us. They are there to apply to other businesses the company runs on. An intuitive level. It thinks is being fair and consistent but most leadership does not like to be told how to run their business or what to do, so they run it that way until they get themselves slapped and take a step back or, maybe in the wake of a decision that goes against perkins, they decide im going to rethink how we do things here to avoid conflict and avoid an issue down the road. Cory is Silicon Valley, Small Companies in particular Silicon Valley seems to not want to play by any rulebook and they think that is the value of the disruption these companies cause. Is that different than the rest of the country . David i dont think its that different its typical of Small Businesses that have a casual approach to business and wear jeans to work. More fun in the workplace and more flexibility. With that, they ignore the need for structure and what should be a good, solid backbone for their organization. Instead, they have something thats not Strong Enough to protect them in the right ways and they find out in the wrong ways by doing something wrong, by getting sued, and then it becomes a real problem to backtrack and change the culture midstream at that point. Cory are there new ways for companies to acquire hr expertise that were not available a few years ago . David there are a ton of hr resources out there, whether its through firms like ours are or Payroll Service providers. At the end of the day, hr is an abundance these days. The problem is most businesses did not get an hr person until they had a hundred employees. That is what businesses are we are talking about. They have no good excuse for ignoring the hrps because it is available as a service and is relatively inexpensive. It does not cost the same as a salary and it is a protection at a minimum and strategic tool at a maximum. Cory is this more important for firms where there are a lot of money like investment terms were the staff might be small but the stakes are huge . The stakes are huge regardless of the size of the organization, but the larger the pool of money, the greater the chance for a larger settlement or larger judgment that firm will have to see when they get sued or have some kind of formal complaint filed against them. Cory david lewis, thank you very much. Bloomberg west will be right back. Cory welcome back to this special edition of bloomberg west. We are looking at the case of ellen pao versus Kleiner Perkins. Right now, we are joined by a partner that has prosecuted a number of sexual discrimination lawsuits. I wonder if you think this case is special . Theres sex, money, a lot of attraction for that reason. Guest it is special. As the first time the sea and tech have been taken on a public way. A majority of these cases are settled prelawsuit. You never hear about them. I do a number of them. The politics of money and gender is at the forefront. Cory why are these settlements happening and we are not hearing about them . Because they are confidential for Public Policy reasons. Settlements do not go to court. Cory why are they selling and not going to court . There are some reasons to go to court if it does go through. Guest theres a lot of risk in going to court. Public trials is not someone anyone wants to do. You are for sure to be impacted by that. You can see it on ellen paos face, yet she remain brave and stoic. Cory you have won some big lawsuits. Do you see some common themes here . Do you see things in this case . Guest the Old Boys Club is a common theme in many of our cases when you have extremely skewed male dominated power structures like you have in tech and vc. A lot of people there believe they are above the law, and that is not uncommon in corporate america. Cory Kleiner Perkins says 20 of their force is women. What do you make of that . Does that change things . Guest why 20 . Why should we accept that. It should be 5050. Cory this is an individual suing and not a classaction suit. Do you think this will change the way things go down in Silicon Valley or the Investment Business . Guest it has already had an impact. We are here today talking about it. Theres been a classaction suit filed against twitter and theres an individual case filed against facebook. There is no reason why you cant use the ellen pao trial. Cory when we see a case usually there have been many settlements before at these firms. Guest it is the tip of the iceberg and now the dialogue is opened up completely. Lots of companies are looking into policies of making pay more transparent so women will know that they are underpaid. Theres a chance some of these companies could insulate themselves from liability. Cory in the twitter case, they dont have rules about promotion. The nature of being a woman means youll be discriminated against because there are no rules about how promotions work. Guest that is the basis of the twitter suit. There should be codified policies for a lawsuit, so you dont get double dipping as far as whether a woman is seen as shrewd. Cory thank you very much. Bloomberg west will be right back after this. Cory welcome back to a special edition of bloomberg west. Today, were looking at the future of a trial between ellen pao and Kleiner Perkins. The jury is deliberating behind me here in San Francisco. We could get a verdict as early as today. At least 100 million at stake so we are going to talk about what this means for the business of business. First, lets go to matt miller for headlines. Matt the crash of the german wings airbus in the french outs alps was a deliberate act by the copilot according to the french prosecutor after the analysis of the black box report lockbox recording. The copilot locked the pilot out of the cockpit. I think he refused to open the door and he turned the button to get down the plane. Matt the airline said he passed all screenings and was fit to fly. The airline says they are not aware of any link to terrorist irans Prime Minister says talks are moving in the right direction. Hes resuming discussions with secretary of state john kerry. A state Department Official says the u. S. Sees a path toward achieving a deal but its unknown whether it will he reached. The u. S. Labor market continues to stabilize. Jobless claims fell by 9000, hitting the lowest level since mid february. Marty most of the hiring from our Small Business index comes out every month and is in the central part of the u. S. It was driven by energy. You see jobs in texas to north dakota. That may be impacted by lower gas prices. We have not seen that yet. The slowest is in the northeast, new jersey that may be impacted by the tough winter as well. Matt the Bloomberg Consumer comfort index hit its secondhighest level since 2007. The fcc has dumped noise star and voted to give a lucrative contract to ericsson. It calls for them to manage more than 500 million phone numbers including helping customers keep their number when switching carriers. Yale University Says it will expand its Computer Science department, adding seven professors over the next two years. Comes after years of student and faculty complaints the school has fallen behind rivals like stamford. W