Welcome to todays Worldwide Exchange. Im ross westgate. These are your headlines today from around the world. Shinzo abe is unveiling the countrys biggest stimulus since the financial crisis. A cold snap helps push up Consumer Prices to a sevenmonth high in december. Tech stocks are higher in europe led by nokia and s. A. P. After the stocks are expected to surpass the longterm target. Stocks in the u. S. Surprise the street by preannouncing earnings and unveiling its biggest corporate overall in a decade by cutting 4,500 jobs. Jay youre watching Worldwide Exchange, bringing you Business News from around the globe. Welcome to the last Worldwide Exchange of the week. Plenty to get through today. Kenny will be joaning us for the second half of the show today. She decided she cant miss out on any more. Also coming up on todays show, wells fargo, the first u. S. Bank to report Fourth Quarter numbers, well have indepth analysis from 1130 cet. Shinzo abe launches the biggest stimulus package since the start of the financial crisis. Czech voters head to the polls. Well have analysis at 10 50 cet. At 11 50 cet, well head out to chicago and take the pulse of the equity market. The s p 500 reaches its highest closing level in five years. If you have any comments, we would love to hear from you. Email us, worldwide cnbc. Com. Hes done it, japans shinzo abe pulled out a 170 billion emergency stimulus package. Hes targeted to boost gdp by as much as 2 . Translator board Monetary Policy, flexible fiscal policy and a Growth Strategy to boost private investments at the same time in order to revive a strong economy. A big chunk of the money will be spent on infrastructure such as railways, roads and tunnels and help rebuild assets in quake areas. Abe says there will be new funds to start up more businesses and help Larger Companies invest overseas. Lets bring in pico basser, head of research and economics at beijing. Ever since weve seen effectively pressure on the bank of japan to raise its inflation target, the nikkei has had a really good run through the Fourth Quarter, up over 20 . Continued now into nine weeks of continuous gains, which we havent seen for some time. Can this continue . Yes, i think we can. We have the right policies in place at long last. I think the fiscal stimulus is very much the right thing to be doing. In that case, i was on bernies show towards the end of december saying this is required and the delivery both in terms of a fiscal stimulus that is large, but also through pressure on the boj to achieve 2 inflation target. If the boj does indeed work in that direction, then i think this is really the last opportunity for japan to to really step back from the abyss of an unforeseeable pile of debt. And i think theyre moving in that direction. The longer shinzo abe can keep the pressure on and get the right policies in place, the better it is for japan. Evidence shows, in fact, that if japan achieves positive inflation, you get a sharp improvement in the primary fiscal balance, primary fiscal deficit moderated to gdp in the second period. Its possible for japan to do that. If they really aim towards getting nominal gdp growth and at a proper inflation target of 2 . Yeah. He also would say the nikkei was wording whether the bank of japan should consider maximizing employment as a policy goal and sort of adopting the fed there. We saw the yen result. Is that sustainable . And if the yen continues to weaken more, i would imagine that would make you more bullish on Japanese Equities. Oh, yeah, it makes me bullish about Japanese Equities and asian equities. The yen carry trade becomes all the more attractive. I think the yen is heading towards 95. By tend of this quarter. And subsequently, the yen carry trade is really quite attractive. And you have qeplus with the fed focused on ensuring that it buys 85 billion of securities every month. All right. If you can stay there, well come back in just a second. Were going to talk about china where Consumer Prices climbed thanks to a cold snap and higher food prices. A bit higher than forecast. Its still comfortably above chinas 4 . Food prices for december are down 1. 9 as we continue to weigh on raw material costs. How does this data pick in with your view, piquay, of china . Well, actually, i think its a good number. Its a good thing that inflation is beginning to tick a lot unwards. It reduces the temptation for china to easy Monetary Policy. As the new leadership gets into place by march 10th, i think its important for china to focus on the medium term. And the medium term, really, is going to be a period of moving away from investmentled growth to a much greater level of consumption. That is much easier said than done. But it requires that china needs to slow down credit xwroeth over the next couple of years, ensuring that it has a couple of years of m2 growing slower than nominal gdp to compensate for five years of excessively rapid growth and credit in m2. So that policy framework would be helped by inflation, surprising a little bit on the upside. And so i look at this number as really quite positive. Yeah. I mean, the initial Market Reaction means that theres less to go for any easing of Monetary Policy. So i guess thats why theres a slight negative reaction to it. But you dont think thats anything to worry about . No, i dont think that any actual move by china towards further easing of Monetary Policy is actually good for china or the world. What the world really needs from china is an economy that is robust. And we saw evidence of increasing robustness in the economy particularly with the import number yesterday. The imports picking up suggests that the chinese economy is seeing a strengthening of domestic demand. How about the restocking . Pardon me . Quite a bit of restocking in that trade number. Well, yeah. I mean, there is a little bit of restocking. I need some help with this. But could i have some help . Yeah. There is an element of restocking there, but the important point is that exports are doing rather well and exports and imports are normally strong. So the fact that exports are beginning to do well and are likely to do a lot better in the march to june period this year means that there is greater scope for china to focus on the medium term reform as spengts. If exports do well, then theres less need to stimulate domestic driven growth. Okay. Well get someone to sort out your ear piece. While we do that, lets remind you where the u. S. Markets are. S p up at a fresh high, 1,472. 2 glass dak up. 5 , the dow up. 6 . We are going to get into a bit of a debate about what happened with the debt ceiling. There we go, piqu why. Hopefully weve sorted you out. I want to get your view on the nikkei up at fresh fiveyear highs as we go into the new year. We have to get into discussions about the debt ceiling. Well, i think the debt ceiling will cause some enhanced volatility from the february the 10th to march the 1st. Were likely to get a midnight solution on february the 28th. But the point is that i think the most difficult aspect of the negotiations was the issue of a tax increase. The republicans hadnt vote no republican congressman had voted for a tax increase in three years. 85 house of representatives members and the majority of the republican senators bothed in favor. So i would say that this suggests that the on fiscal issues is now a thing of the past. I mean, its saying something quite strong, but i think we are much more likely to get a reasonable solution on march the 1st than seems likely until the middle of january the 1st this year. Were likely to get that solution. There will be a period of volatility for about 20 days in february. But once thats out of the way, i think all signals are green for risk assets this year. Thanks for that. Now lets get you up to speed with where we are on european global equities. To the up side, around about five to four advancers starting to outpace the declines in the Dow Jones Stoxx 600. Ftse 100, pretty flat, up 3 points. Xetra dax up 6 points. The cac 40 is absolutely flat and the ibex is up 12 points. We can continue to keep our focus, though, on whats going on with the debt markets. Weve got an italian auction coming out today which is going to give us a bit of a steer. Were looking up to 3. 5 billion. We expect auction yields to come down to a level we havent seen since 4. 18 in italy since around 2010. Yields in italy, the costs come down to threeyear lows yesterday. A pretty strong spanish auction yesterday. Keep our eyes on this. So the currency markets are concerned, plenty of focus on dollar yen. Lets show you where we stand at the moment. 88. 97. We have this morning been up to 89. 35. Euro yen higher, stipulating around the 118 mark, as well. Euro dollar had big moves yesterday, posting with the spanish auction mr. Draghi and the ecb coming out saying it was unanimous about no Interest Rate cuts whereas in the previous month there had been some discussion about that. Euro dollar, 11. 3260. Lets bring you up to speed with the asian trading session today as they wrap up the week. Li sixuan joins us for the first time today. Thanks, ross. Japan was a clear outperformer after shinzo abe unveiled his massive stimulus plan. And the nikkei gained 1. 4 today. Just to put it into context, this index is up for the ninth straight week, its longest winning streak since late 1988. Shares of stocks surged to nearly 5 after the operator of clothing chain unicore raised its full year guidance. But hotter than expected cpi data from china put new pressure on the shanghai deposit. There will be more curbs to taint housing prices. Meanwhile, weakness in chinas blue chips dropped the hang seng lower. But hsbc did lend some support after the bank said yesterday that the plan to sell its stake to citigroup was still on track. Korean automakers took a hit after the korean won climbed to a 17month high. The kospi finished lower by. 5 . In australia, miners lost out as a cyclone affected their operations. The asx 200 finished down. 3 . Its the first weekly loss in eight weeks. Infosys trading marginally in the green. Shares trading nearly 16 after the Software Company posted betterthanexpected earnings and raised its Sales Forecast for the year. More on that with our guest later on in the show. Thanks, ross. Well keep you in that later on. Still to come, hong kong has new ipo rules in place. Will the reform give them a hand up in the Global Equity rates . What are you doing . Nothing. Are you stealing our Daughters School supplies and taking them to work . No, i was just looking for my stapler and my. This thing. I save money by using fedex ground and buy my own supplies. Thats a great idea. Im going to go. We got clients in today. [ male announcer ] save on ground shipping at fedex office. Google search results in europe look set for a change. The eu muniea explains his investigation into the search engine. Hes convinced google is profiting by diverting internet traffic for certain businesses. American skres announced betterthanexpected earnings for the Fourth Quarter. It saw revenues of 8. 4 had billion. It will make big restructuring changes which includes 5,400 job cuts throughout the quarter. Shares dipped in extended hours of trading the. And the fate of superman remains firmly with Warner Brothers and dc comics after a decision from a california court. The court of appeals said that the rights for the man of appeals should not stay with the cocreators. The decision means that warner can release this summers new superman reboot without fear of legal challenges. So were watching today. Who is your favorite hee roar . Superman, ironman, super mario draghi . Whoever you like, email us, tweet us. My produces asked me who i thought my favorite super hero was. It took my a while to think about it, but then i thought hong kong fooey. There you go. Many happy memories. Talking about hong kong, hong kong is set to influence sweeping reforms this year. The move is seep as a bid to attract High Quality Companies as it seeks to try and become more competitive against rivals in new york and singapore. Mark is still with us. Good to see you. Are these rules going to have the desired effect, do you think . I think its the rules are good. And i think in the long run, they will have the desired effect. I think the idea really is to continue to attract really good companies. But i think at some point it would enhance the overall quality and the standard of the Stock Exchange and i think in the long run, people will be attracted to think that the exchange is definitely a more credible one. So i think in the long run, they will have the desired effect. What in particular is a stand out improvement . I think the combination of some of the rules would be important. I think the exchange has never made it a doubt that they place a lot of emphasis on the sponsors work. And sponsors are basically the Financial Institute to manage the deal and sign off on the deal. So i think a lot of the reforms have been targeted towards how the sponsors carry out their duties. When does a sponsor come in . How do they involve themselves in compare he prosecute paring the company to become the most enlisted. At the end of the day, if the perspective that goes out to the street contains untrue statements and the sponsors were aware of this and yet they let the prospectus go out, they could face criminal sanctions. I think thats the most worrying thing. And i think from the investors perspective, they can rely on these sponsors who know the company and rely on them to do their work and help the company to improve their internet compliance measures and essentially bring the company to become a listed company that an investor can have confidence in. As you seem to be suggesting, weve pushed the Hong Kong Market is being guilty of pushing how immature deals, immature pricing. Oh, i think its not it hasnt happened a lot, but i think there have been isolated cases whereby deals have gone out and clearly the sponsors have not done their duties. I think the recent hong kong specs was a good example. I think the sponsor fell short of the required standards. So i think the exchange, that was one of the big factors that prompted the exchange to look at the current regime a lot more closely and really come up with these recommended practices. Again, i mean, the criminal liability point will take some time to implement because it does need to go through legislation. Having said that, while the rules would only come out, in fact, in october later this year, a lot of the banks when the rules were first muted, they took a lot of steps to improve their internal compliance measures, to improve their internal processes. So i think we have seen a lot of banks starting to take these changes very seriously and we do see that the amount of work that they put in as improved a lot over the past few deals. So we are seeing an increase in the level and hopefully that will really ensure that the low risk and having companies that are really pushed out immaturely. Mark, how do these rules compare with some of the competitors for the Hong Kong Exchange around the world, including some in asia like the sgx as well as those in new york, london, tokyo on, etcetera . Well, i think a lot of the other Stock Exchanges, especially in the region, i think in singapore, singapore has taken a slightly different approach. Singapore has done sthings like raising the standard in listing in the sense that you have higher qualificationes and thresholds before seek ago listing in singapore. So i think theyve taken slightly different measures. Some of the other exchanges, like in new york, i think its the nature of the u. S. Regime itself. I think they have a lot of protect in terms of litigation by shareholders and that is a big concern. I think that hong kong is slightly different. I think theyve tried everything. But when this whole inflex of smaller, privately run companies coming to the market, i think this is definitely a lot more important. And i think, you know, we have seen a lot of our competition in hong kong remaining one of the Top Destinations in the i think theres always a tendency for companies to say, look, well try to list in hong kong. So, you know, i think there will be sort of like these implement that these rules act as a control to make sure that, you know, remind the banks to do their work properly. Okay. I think a lot of the banks are doing it. Thanks for that, mark. Piquay, well he see you in a little bit, as well. The tallest building in the uk, the sharp, has opened its doors to the paying public. Our very own tom mcquestionzy took one of the elevators to the viewing level. At more than 300 meters, the shard dominates londons skyline. Doors open to the paying public on february the 1st. Organizers are confident they can attract a million plus visitors a year. London is, you know, blasting into the 21st century. I think london is accepting to new thoughts ask new technology and from what weve seen from the people of london, theyre embracing the building. We have some deextracters, but i think on the whole the building is popular. The highest viewing points on the tower, the views can be seen up to 40 miles. Even the best architecture in the world cant mitigate the weather and today its a little more wet than wow. Building europes largest building was nearly ended back in 2009 due to lack of funds. House ago fivestar hotel, world renown restaurant and exclusive residential apartments, the architects dub it a vertical city. London is one of the key cities in the world. One of the things that was always lacking in the city was the ability to come up with a Tall Building and look down on the city in the same way as the eiffel tower, you can see paris, you can see new york, and this is a 21st century layer that has been added to the city. This is a sign of our times. It will have to be the highest toilet in london. Talk a