Accepted a sweetened offer. China cracking down on peertopeer platforms. Theyre vowing to cleanse the market. The platform should serve as an intermediary. Says theys the pboc are strengthening oversight of online payment firms. Kong,e of markets, hong shanghai, swinging back into gains. Gains in some parts of the region today. Those are your top headlines. This is bloomberg west. Cori im in for emily chang. Mark zuckerberg fires back at his critics about expanding Internet Access in india. tis the season for jeff bezoss net worth to soar. Gender and racial equality are back in the spotlight as twitter names a new head of diversity. Now to our lead. Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg making a personal appeal in one of indias leading newspapers insisting that the country allow , a Free Internet service. India, secretary wrote instead of wanting to give people access to some basic Internet Services for free critics continue to spread false claims even if that means leaving behind a billion people. It allows free mobile Internet Access. A restricted handful of apps including facebook. Facebook says it is at least something. Opponents say it threatens the principles of Net Neutrality. Indias Regulatory Authority communicationse to stop the service pending a ruling of whether it violates Net Neutrality. The decision is expected next month. Isning us now from new york David Kilpatrick the author of , the facebook effect. Larry is the president of the think take focused on telecommunications issues. Larry, let me start with you. This notion of Net Neutrality. Which has recently become the policy of the fcc. If not the law of the land. Why is it so important in a developing internet world . Larry the Net Neutrality debate has been going on for at least 10 years here. It has been highly politicized. You are seeing that in india. That the Free Basic Service one can look at it through a net as an issue of having to seek permission for innovation. It really is a Program Designed to encourage Broadband Adoption. To get the social value of the internet to as many people as possible. Cory you know the heart of Mark Zuckerberg and facebook to the , critics of this, who see a land grab by facebook, is that how Mark Zuckerberg sees it . David of course not. Mark zuckerberg for 10 years plus has basically believed that he is taking facebook and conductivity to everyone on the planet. That is 7. 3 billion people. That is what he thinks he is trying to do. Before he can get them to facebook he has to get them , connected. He also thinks that he is a rich guy and should be doing some good stuff. Hes trying to do in his mind something good for india, for the planet, with internet. Org and this free service. They feel very blindsided by this protocols of net which reality. I think these concerns are kind of ludicrous. I dont even know what Net Neutrality means. If it is an argument that people should not have something they otherwise would not have i dont , buy it. I think this is a great example of doing well by doing good. Facebook will benefit over time. If these people come online, if they use facebook, if the internet ad market grows in india, but in the meantime he is to get people online. Something that they need and i think its a good thing. Cory hes been talking about the same talking points. Lets listen to what mark had to say in his own words. Mark zuckerberg for every 10 people who get access to the internet, one person gets a new job and one person gets lifted out of poverty. So there is just a tremendous opportunity in india. If there are a billion people who were not connected. This is one of the biggest opportunities to help develop the economy here and to help alleviate poverty. And really lift up a lot of folks. Cory if that is the case, why not offer twitter, why not offer those other companies that compete with facebook . Larry from what i understand the service is open to all as long as they can adhere to the programs parameters. Again, this is free. It is open to all. I think you need to take a step back and think about what mr. Zuckerberg is trying to do. We have been struggling with internet adoption here in the United States for more than 10 years. That was the whole purpose of our National Broadband plan back in 2010. The problem is that when you talk about Broadband Adoption there is a supplyside component , of it. That is always the infrastructure. Then there is a demand side. One element of that is price and the other is relevance. Access to the internet needs to be relevant to me if i want to get on or not even if i can , afford it. What this lowcost program or nocost program does is give people an onramp onto the internet. Yes it might be limited , programming, but it allows people to access the internet when perhaps they could not do it. You solve the affordability problem and the relevancy issue. This notion that if all cant have it, the noncant have it, this does not make sense to me. Cory do you think they could ameliorate those concerns and offering google plus . David they have adjusted the program already quite a bit. I am glad that larry and i agree so completely on this. To add to a point that larry made in india a lot of these , poor people dont understand what going on the internet means. Seeding theually seatin market just by giving them something they would need to be aware of. The idea of this plan is that people will be able to pay for it down the road. You will be able to wean them off the free service. A gigantic country where people are not very connected. Where he is trying to help them learn the benefits of that. Cory when i see pictures of zuckerberg wearing a tie i find that deeply disconcerting. David it shows how seriously he takes this issue. Cory i guess it does. Thank you very much to both of you. Thank you for joining us on this topic. Coming up, Ecommerce Companies like amazon. Com dominated the Holiday Shopping. The winners and losers. Ceo thatalk with one is incredibly rich. The bloomberg billionaires index next. , cory another banner Holiday Season for online companies. Online giants like amazon had plenty to celebrate. Sales did not treat fedex so well. Shannon joins me now. Always a pleasure. This has been a really interesting time for all companies in retail. It didnt look like it was going to be so good. A short and seizing season leading up to those final days, the big retailers preannouncing some pain. Shannon it came in slightly above expectations. That was really because of this late surge and ecommerce. November wasnt looking good but , those final two weeks in consumers really went out and december, started shopping. Retail sales online were up 20 this year. For that total time span, bricks and mortar, sales were up about 8 between black friday and christmas. It is not even done yet. One analyst was telling me that december 26 is probably going to be the second biggest shopping day of the year because everybody went to the store with returns and their gift cards and trying to get some good deals on sales. That behavior, on one level you can track it consistently over time. An it is really hitting Inflection Point in the last couple of years. The biggest shopping day was the last good shipping day of the year. Shannon fedex says it got this lastminute surge. We are like, come on, it is 2015, you should know that people are going to buying a lot online. I think the volume of Online Purchases really surprised people. It didnt necessarily surprise ups because in 2013 they had their own issue where they werent prepared for the surge. This year was fedexs turn. Cory lets talk about that. Fedex said a sudden surge, we could not prepare for this. Ups had its big screwup two years ago. They introduce all sorts of new Logistics Systems there out there network. They did not have the same problem. It is the same shoppers and , often the same stuff. Shannon fedex did say that they had some really bad weather in the memphis area. Heavy rains, heavy wind where the big distribution hub is. Cause somes will soulsearching for them. You know weather is going to happen. It also may cause some soulsearching for amazon. The wall street journal had a very interesting piece about amazon reconsidering its relationship with ups. They are reof violating it. Can we become less dependent on outside carriers . ,aving a situation like this amazon lives and dies by quick delivery, getting things there on time. If they feel like they cant count on fedex or ups, maybe it bolsters this argument inside the company that we need to build out our own logistics. We need to take this into our own hands. Cory i dont know. I remember a million years ago inc. Theyked at time , were working on their logistics for delivering magazines and they wouldnt have to use the post office. Is this just a Competitive Bidding gimmick . Shannon that could be true but , jeff bezos is known to take a page out of walmarts playbook. Walmart has its own private trucking fleet. 80 of walmart merchandise is shipped from walmart distribution to a store with a truck that is owned by walmart. Their logistics system, and they feel like that has served them well. Jeff bezos is a student of walmart, studying their logistics. I dont know if it will be completely unprecedented for a megaretailer to really on their own distribution chain. You know them better than i do. Cory i mean this in the kindest way. You are the queen of walmart. Always a pleasure. Thank you very much. Plenty to celebrate this Holiday Shopping season. Jeff bezos of amazon was arguably the biggest winner. It thisk is showing year. Despite its general lack of profitability, it has more than doubled this year which means , jeff bezoss personal net worth has increased rapidly. Interesting not so much that his wealth has increased, but that he sold some stock. Tom in the summertime, he sold about half 1 billion worth of stock. Cory but there is taxes as well. Tom a 200 million hit for that. He has added i believe 30 billion this year. That more than doubles the nears gainer on our index. Gainer on our index. Cory he is largely undiversified in those holdings. Tom about 95 of his wealth is in amazon stock. It is done amazingly well for him today. They are basically betting on jeff bezos. Cory take me under the hood. Howd you analyze the rest. Tom the hardest part of his fortune is to estimate the rest of his fortune. Amazons publicly traded. He also owns the Washington Post and business insider. Blue origin, no one knows if it is making profits yet. You have spacex, which google invested in. You could see a big uplift or more of a money pit. Cory does it make you wonder what his ultimate intentions for that wealth . He drives a honda minivan. His wife drops them off at work every day. Tom he is extremely frugal. He is one of the least generous of billionaires. The idea behind that is that he is 100 focused on amazon. Amazon and blue origin, and the doesnt want any distraction from anything else. Cory thank you very much. Interesting stuff from the billionaires index as always. Beatles fans, they twist and shout and they are streaming the over the weekend. Beatles songs that were played 50 million times the first 48 hours they were available online. Spotify has all 224 of the songs from their catalog that became available on christmas eve. Early statistics show come together was the most popular beatles track. Beatles one of the last classic rock holdouts from streaming services. Led zeppelin, pink floyd, caved in 2013. Ac dc finally caved to this summer, thankfully. Tech deals are reaching a level comseen since the dt bubble. Will there be a hangover . Cory 2015 was a record year for mergers and acquisitions. Inh deals reach 450 billion total volume. That is coming close to the frenzy of 2000. That was spurred by the big aol time warner deal. How did that work out . Not so well. What can we expect for 2016 . Bloombergs m a reporter joins us now. Lets talk about bad deals. Are we going to look back on deals instantly as bad deals . Will they go bad as fast as the 49ers have gone bad . Alex i dont know, cory. Nothing jumps out in my mind as, why did they do that . At least this year. There are one or two that are deftly hanging out there as question marks in my mind. Some of them have are the obvious candidates as the biggest ones. When we look back at at t buying directv. A deal to close this past year. Are we going to think that was a great deal 10 years from now if people are watching video in a new way . I dont know. I think that one really relies on technology not going as thinky as people might they are with mobile video. Verizon buying aol, some people are still scratching their heads. It is a bit unclear exactly on how that one comes together. Certainly there are champions of that. Horizonure that fries will be able to put some of that content to use or sell it off. There is still a leap of faith. We will have to see in 2016 exactly how that one shakes out. Emc and vmware stocks have gone down quite a bit. We will have to see in 2016 exactly how that one shakes out. If in fact that deal gets done as currently structured. Cory where do you think were going to see some big mergers, particularly in the next year . Alex i dont have any particular inside information on these. As i think about 2016, my job is to break deal news. What questions am i going to ask . What are at the top of my list . Yelp tried to sell itself this year. It hired Goldman Sachs and had some internal interest. The ceo decided that he didnt want to sell. Could that come back in 2016. As soon as he decided he did not want to sell, the stock went down and has not really recovered yet. It is hovering far off of its onetime highs. You have to wonder if there are some other companies that could maybe work with yelp that have also struggled. Groupon or grubhub, perhaps they could come together and there is a merger of equals situation there. Those companies are the top of my list because they havent really made it as public companies. Maybe this is the year that they decide we have to do something different. Cory you talk about content. Lions gate has been rumored to be on the block forever. Could something finally happen there . What would change to make that deal take place . Alex the longest rumored deal of the year has been lions gate. We have written about it several times. A lot of people told me to expect this to happen in the when taxrter of 2016 rules allow a combined company to be domiciled in canada. We have seen john malone in 2015 take a stake in lions gate. He already owns the controlling interest of starz. He could put both of those companies together, and in fact that company could even be acquired by another john Malone Company down the road from what some of my sources indicate in discovery. John malone could make a mini time warner and companies that he owns. We will see. Cory thank you very much. Coming up, legendary investor offers advice for Tech Companies that want to be big in china. Ofit is tuesday, the 29th december. An update of top stories. Toshiba seeking its credit line, the second in months. It needs an additional 2. 5 billion to pay for restructuring. The Company Previously received a 3 billion credit commitment in september and tends to apply for the funding next month. Carl icon has escalated his bidding war with bridgestone as the billionaire investor seeks control of pep boys. Ins offering 18. 50 a share cash, raising his offer to more than 1 billion. The chain had previously accepted a sweetened offer at 17 following an earlier bid by carl icon. Onna cracking down peertopeer platforms. It is a first for the industry. The Bank Regulator is going to cleanse the market. New role state that the platform should serve as an intermedia, and not raise or lend money. It comes as the pboc says they are strengthening oversight of online payment firms. Havers and south korea reached a tentative wage agreement to bring an end to strike sarah. Automaker makes its annual sales markets for the First Time Since 2008. There have been seven consecutive quarters of profit decline. Renewedkerberg has calls for india to allow Free Internet service by making a personal appeal and one of the leading newspapers. He proposed free basics, allowing customers to access the social networking site and other Services Without a data plan. It is already offered in countries from bangladesh to zambia, but critics say it threatens the principle of Net Neutrality. The highest court in the has has two burly stopped a senator from being disqualified. She is still in it. That cannas these candidacy had been previously barred because of issues with her citizenship. She renounced her citizenship and 2001 to reside in the United States, but later became a dual citizen. The Election Commission has 10 days to comment. A quick check of the markets trading in the asiapacific. Nikkei to 25 swinging between gains and losses. It is half a percent higher right now. Kospi is down. We are counting to the reopen in china at the top of the hour. Cory despite the slowdown in chinas economy, Tech Companies still have plenty of room to grow there. With sequoiapoke capitals chairman about how u. S. Companys can get in on the action. I dont think anything has changed about china. The underlying consumer demand is very strong in china. Internet companies, their business is very good. It is strong, healthy, it is vibrant. We have built our own business over the course of the last 1314 years. Emily a very robust business. M