Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - January 30th, 2026

23:04Carol Massar:So what do you hear from defense companies about getting some attention like that from the president? Do they kind of brush it off a little bit, like we're talking with them? I think one interesting trend we've seen from the reports, whether it was Northrop or Raytheon today, is the lack of buybacks, because that's what the administration asked for, a focus on additional capex. Raytheon mentioned that. Northrop mentioned that. Boeing mentioned that. So across the board, everyone's like, sure, we're investing. We're going to get you supplies on time. That's our job. And it helps funnel the growth.

23:35Carol Massar:The Northrop CEO saying Northrop is balancing the need for performance with affordability and speed to market to meet the U.S. Defense Department's focus on speedy development. Yes. And I think Kathy Ward and the CEO of Northrop said this was the best spending environment she's ever seen in her career. So most of these executives are very bullish. Do the upstarts in defense tech pose a threat to the incumbents? And I'm thinking of, you know, an Anduril that is not yet. And I say not yet because obviously this company, I'm guessing, will IPO at some point soon. Do they compete with these incumbents?

24:05Yes, clearly they're competing and they're collaborating. They're working together both internationally and domestically. The primes are trying to work with, you know, Northrop has a partnership with Kratos on CCA. It's an autonomous vehicle, essentially. So we're seeing a lot more collaboration, but they're also trying to take share. But the budget is growing overall, and that's the bottom line. Although we're not really seeing it in 26. Northrop's guidance is 5 % growth. They talk about an acceleration from there in 27, 28. Same thing with Raytheon. It was modest growth in defense. It didn't really pop.

24:39Yes, it grew in the second half versus the first half, and we'll see how those trends continue.

24:43Carol Massar:I feel like with all of the geopolitical tensions and the wars that we've seen around the world, that everybody comes back to the U.S. military might and the defense companies here in the United States. What is the global picture? Where's the competition? Is there not much global competition, Sheila, when it comes to the U.S. defense companies? So I think it's focused on maybe a few things. First is missiles and munitions, readiness. We need to have that available, and that's why we're seeing companies like Lockheed increase PAC-3 production from 600 missiles a year. What's PAC-3 production? It's a missile.

25:16PAC-3 is the name of the missile. going from 600 units a year to 2 ,000. That is significant to say the least. That's$8 billion of additional revenues to Lockheed over seven years if they could ramp to those levels. The backlog's 20 years for a missile like that. We're seeing that across the board. LHX 10 days ago or two weeks ago now announced that they are seeing a government investment within their solid rocket motor business that powers missiles. They're going to open up 60 factories next year. LHX currently has 250 factories. So that's the magnitude of investment we're seeing from the government.

25:53So focus on missiles and munitions. And second, I think it goes back to old school warfare. Everybody thinks helicopters are over and F-35 is a bad program. But if we think about Venezuela, if we think about Iran, what's the kind of equipment we're using? So it's not necessarily rebuilding an entire fleet for the Navy, but it's doing things that we could use pretty quickly. Just in the last 90 seconds, I want to hit Boeing with you. Shares are down today by about 1.8%. The company did report this morning a second straight quarter of generating cash, 57 % bump in sales during the final three months of the year.

26:28Shares down, though. Is it because of accounting charges for the KC-46 tanker program? Is that it? No, everybody just assumes that's going to happen every quarter. So we're all good there. Why are shares down after a quarter that looks pretty good? So the shares opened down. The call at 1030 got it up. Right. It reversed about four points, and then they're down again. We're a believer in Boeing. Their free cash flow was a loss of$2 billion in 2025. They're talking about positive$2 billion at the midpoint in 26. Normalized for one-time items, they're saying their free cash flow is high single digits, so say$8 billion.

27:02They're reaffirming their$10 billion target. And then they're saying they could go above that. So, you know, 10, 15, it's giving long only as a reason not to dismiss the stock. If this company could actually earn$10 billion of free cash flow, then it's quite compelling at its current valuation. So we're seeing a lot of fluctuations. Are they talking back 27, 28? No, I think that you're going to see$2 billion in 26 and an improvement in 27 and 28.

27:28Carol Massar:So Boeing, let me just say, you've got a$290 price target. Is that$244? You feel good about that? Yes. Do you want to raise it? We are supportive of Boeing. We think there's a few positive catalysts. I think President Trump might be headed to China in April. We'll see if Boeing heads there. We haven't seen a China order since I can't even recall. Maybe it was 2019, maybe earlier. So I think Boeing works from here, you know, depressed prices for maxes, maybe 50 percent below what they historically sell at today. That was Sheila Kayalu, Managing Director for Equity Research at Jeffries. Coming up on Bloomberg Business Week, yes, indeed, we are a services-led economy in the United States.

28:06Carol Massar:And yet, with the White House focusing on bringing manufacturing back to the United States, getting a read on that and the manufacturing economy, super important. And we get that from none other than Dan Flornes, the CEO of Fastenal. Plus, a story on AI, one of Carroll's favorites, I think it's fair to say. He joins us next. This is Bloomberg.

28:30Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Smart Talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's chairman and CEO, Arvind Krishna. And I asked him, how can companies use AI to its fullest potential to create smarter business?

28:46Carol Massar:My one advice to them, pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example? If anybody has more than 10 % of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind. If anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software 30 % more productive today with the goal of being 70 % more productive. Yeah. Wow. So we are not asking our clients to be the first experiment on it. We say, you can leverage what we did. We're happy to bring out all our learnings, including what needs to change in the process, because the biggest change is not technology.

29:31It's getting people to accept that there's a different way to do things. To listen to the full conversation, visit ibm.com slash smarttalks.

29:47Carol Massar:If you follow markets, you know the value of long-term thinking. You plan, you diversify, you prepare for volatility. But even the best strategies can't prevent every bad day. For more than 75 years, Cincinnati Insurance has helped individuals and businesses navigate tough moments with expertise, personal attention, and independent agents who focus on relationships, not transactions. The Cincinnati Insurance Companies. Let them make your bad day better. Find an agent at c-i-n-f-i-n dot com.

30:48Carol Massar:Stop searching for files and finally get everyone on the same page. Do that. Do that. Do that with Acrobat. Learn more at adobe.com slash do that with Acrobat. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. So something we've already touched upon, and this is this letter from 60 CEOs of Minnesota-based companies, more than 60, I should say, have called for an immediate de-escalation of tensions between state, local, and federal authorities as the state is reeling from another fatal shooting of an American by immigration agents. The chief executive officers of companies, they include Target, Best Buy, Land O 'Lakes, Cargill, General Mills, United Health Group, as well as professional sports teams, including the Minnesota Vikings, among the signatories of the letter that was shared yesterday, Sunday, by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce.

31:43Carol Massar:We're laying that out for those who are watching on streaming and TV. Just to get to the crux of it, though, the open letter says, we are calling for an immediate de-escalation of tensions and for state, local, and federal officials to work together to find real solutions. Our next guest is head of a company in the great state of Minnesota. We're talking about Fastenal, recently reported earnings, the stock selling off on the day of the report, but rallying the day after the most in nine months. That trade reaction had us scratching our heads. So we're grateful, Carol, to have back with us to talk about the release of the outlook.

32:16The CEO of the close to$50 billion market cap company, Fastenal, Dan Flournes, is back with us.

32:22Carol Massar:Yeah, so delighted. Let's get to it. Dan, good to have you here. Happy New Year. We do love talking with you. We feel like we get a great read on the U.S. economy, the manufacturing world. You've seen a lot in your career. We want to get to all of this. But I really do feel like we'd be remiss to not ask you about what's going on in your home state. And I feel like those who are listening might be curious if you were asked to sign this letter of CEOs who want a de-escalation of what's happening in Minneapolis specifically. So were you aware that this letter was happening or were you asked to sign it?

32:59First off, Happy New Year and thanks for allowing me to participate today. I was not aware of it. We're outstate Minnesota. We're about two and a half hours from the Minneapolis-St. Paul market. And so it's not uncommon. It's a pretty tight-knit group up in the Twin Cities. And was not aware of it going out. With that said, was not surprised by going out. And it seemed to be pretty common sense of, hey, let's dial down the heat.

33:26Carol Massar:So would you have signed it, though, if asked? Yeah, I would have signed that. what do you what's we talk so much about leadership at this time and i am curious um what you see as the responsibility of leaders in the united states when we see situations happening where it feels like and again i don't want to get political i don't want to take sides but it does feel like um americans are being what some would say is targeted unfairly Yeah. You know, I think as a leader, one of our tasks are to create some calm in the air. You know, I think back a few years ago when COVID was going on, it seemed like everybody every day turned everything into a political thing.

34:12And sometimes it's a case of, you know, if you're around a bunch of people that are high at risk in the case of COVID, put a mask on. If you're not and you don't want to be there, then go someplace else. You know, same thing here. Let's try to dial the heat down and focus on what we're trying to accomplish, not how we can see who can be the most boisterous in the market of throwing ideas out. And that's on both sides of the fence. Dan, one thing that we're trying to figure out is getting a good read on the economy. And you guys have such a great read on it, given that you touch so many sectors.

34:48I mean, if you're using nuts, bolts, screws, anchors, rivets, any kind of fastener, industrial janitorial safety supplies, you guys do it. On earnings, you mentioned the broader market conditions remained mixed. What exactly did you mean by that? When you say mixed, what's the good? What's the bad? Well, mixed from the standpoint, we focus a lot on the purchasing manager's index published by ISM. And that's been sub 50 for 36 of the last 38 months. So from the standpoint of the economy has not given us any lift, we are getting good traction in the marketplace. And we finished out the last half of 2025 with double digit growth.

35:31That's really an exercise of taking market share more than the wind is to our backs.

35:36Carol Massar:And I know we've talked about this too, Dan, with you about being in a prolonged downturn in the industrial economy. any green shoots that you were seeing or signs of an inflection? And if so, I'm just curious, what markets might you be optimistic and which are maybe running weaker than you anticipated and maybe will continue to this year? Yeah, it's a little bit of an anecdotal answer, so I apologize for that. We're seeing in some of the published data, some industrial production numbers improving late in the year. We aren't seeing that directly in our business, but for us, November, December is a seasonally week period.

36:11So that doesn't surprise me that we won't see it. So don't know if there's some green shoots there. I can tell you this from my travel. If it's a business that's linked to certain industries and data centers, an example from a recent trip I had on the East Coast where I was visiting a mechanical contractor and their business was on fire and 70 % of their activity was around data centers. Hmm.

36:37Carol Massar:So on. So so so that's the good part, right? And that that's the good part. That story we keep hearing about the AI build out, the data center build out. You saw it firsthand. It's real. It's real. It's real. In fact, I had a I spent a big chunk of my time having conversations with our district leaders. We have about 240 district managers. They each run about a thirty five million dollar business. You add them all up. That's an$8 billion fast and all. So I had a conversation with our team in Atlanta this morning, one of our district managers, and most of his discussion was about business pickup he's seeing in his market because of data centers.

37:15Now, Atlanta is unique in that it's one of a handful that are really being impacted by that buildup. What is the pricing power, Dan, that the company has right now? Because historically, during periods of inflation, you've been able to be pretty aggressive with price increases. I think people would argue you weren't as aggressive as you could have been in 2025. What's the barrier to pushing price more aggressively? Well, you know, the one barrier is the size of the customer, the nature of the products, how much of it is production-centered versus maintenance-centered. Because when it's production-centered business, you have customers buying a very large volume of narrow band of SKUs.

37:57And their price sensitivity is different than if it's MRO and they're buying, you know,$100 of this and$100 of that.

38:04Carol Massar:You know, one of the things I want to ask you, too, there was a story on my read in this morning, Dan, in terms of Volkswagen saying that they're going to, they had plans for a possible Audi factory in the United States. They're not progressing due to President Donald Trump's tariffs and unsuccessful talks for local incentives. So we have certainly seen an administration that's talks about all the investment money coming into the U.S. And I think we here at Bloomberg continue to try and figure out how much of this is actually going to play out. You can say you're going to invest, and then there's the reality of actually building facilities.

38:35Carol Massar:First of all, tariffs. And I know we've talked about this with you in the past, so forgive me if I'm repeating. But you're thinking about outsourcing. How have tariffs changed that, especially when it comes to fasteners, I think primarily sourced from China and Asia? So I'm just curious how any of it's been shifting for you. Yeah. So you are absolutely correct. most of the fasteners in this country, in North America in general, come from Northern Asia, China, primarily. Obviously, huge impacts. And for us, what it's meant is for about the last six years, seven years, we've been actively expanding our ability to import fasteners, because there's still not a lot of domestic production.

39:20And so when I think back to 2018, our primary sourcing entity was based in Shanghai with a secondary location in southern Taiwan. Today, we have personnel in Bangkok. We have personnel in India. And that's where all of our growth and movement of sourcing personnel has occurred over the last seven, eight years to just broaden our ability to be a little more agile where you source from, depending on the geography it's going into. So that's on the sourcing side. But what about on your customer side and about customers moving manufacturing back to the U.S. Are you seeing that happen? Are you hearing discussions of that?

40:01Yeah, I guess, you know, anecdotally, yes. I can't say that we've seen a tremendous influx. What I would say is I hear less about stuff leaving than maybe I would have, you know, 10 years ago or five years ago. and that in itself is a win from the standpoint of production. But, you know, a lot of it is folks are getting closer to where the end customer is for a lot of our customers. And so when I see customers expanding production facilities in North America, and I'll say more broadly than North America rather than just the United States, it's usually to service more efficiently the local market.

40:48Carol Massar:which makes sense which we which we've seen that trend right happening i feel like over time hey dan uh you mentioned about maybe less um companies leaving the u.s speaking of leaving you are stepping down as ceo uh come july you've been ceo since 2016 you were cfo before that going back to 2002 you've been there a long time and i know um last time you were on i asked you a question about this cycle and i was not very kind i got yelled at by my team um because i think i gave you 20 seconds, but we do get yelled at. You get 25 seconds now. No, no, no. You've got almost two minutes. How do you describe this cycle?

41:25Carol Massar:Because it feels unusual. Well, it's unusual in that, you know, you hear about everything, whereas in years past, there was so much of this political stuff that went on. But most of it, if you weren't in the midst of it, you were oblivious to. And you just, you just, you went around about your life. Now everybody hears about everything when it happens. So that's just a lot more noise. On the flip side, what's really different is, I mentioned on that conversation with the team in Atlanta this morning, we were talking about data centers. And one of the people on the call, he leads our business in the Southern US.

42:04He said, hey, Dan, I'm going to flip you something. And he punched in a bunch of questions. and he came back with a 29-page report on the data center industry in the United States. And so I read through a bunch of it. It's actually pretty accurate and pretty good information. I mean, there's stuff in there I can pick apart,

42:26Carol Massar:but it's pretty good. Yeah, I know. Well, you know, okay, now - Dan still had to do the reading though. It didn't read the report for him. So I probably would have, but I'm old school, I guess. Is that, just quickly, I know this is truly like 30 seconds. Is that the most transformative change you think we'll see over the next decade is just the continued impact of AI and things like ChatGPT and everything else connected? Just your quick thought on that. Yeah. I mean, when I think of our business, we're selling tens of thousands of different parts to customers every day. And the ability to improve the visibility for folks sourcing all that stuff is an incredible efficiency tool.

43:06That's Daniel Flournis, CEO of Fastenal.

43:09Carol Massar:And that does it for the first hour of Bloomberg Business Week Daily. Still ahead, consumers are shifting away from credit cards and towards debt or buy now, pay later programs. So what does that say about the health of the consumer? What kind of activity are we seeing around that? Plus, a look back to some of the biggest stories that came out of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Including one world leader's choice in eyewear, it was the look that everybody was talking about. So. I promise this is a fun one, okay? We don't usually go there, but this is a really fun one. You're going to love it.

43:40Carol Massar:I'm just going to say that. All right, you're listening to Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Carol Masser. And I'm Tim Stanovic. Stay with us. Today's top stories and global business headlines coming up right now.

43:54Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Smart Talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's chairman and CEO, Arvind Krishna, and I asked him, How can companies use AI to its fullest potential to create smarter business?

44:10Carol Massar:My one advice to them, pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example? If anybody has more than 10 % of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind. If anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software 30 % more productive today, with the goal of being 70 % more productive. Yeah. Wow. So we are not asking our clients to be the first experiment on it. We say, you can leverage what we did. We are happy to bring out all our learnings, including what needs to change in the process. Because the biggest change is not technology.

44:55It's getting people to accept that there's a different way to do things. To listen to the full conversation, visit ibm.com slash smarttalks.

45:11Carol Massar:If you follow markets, you know the value of long-term thinking. You plan, you diversify, you prepare for volatility. But even the best strategies can't prevent every bad day. For more than 75 years, Cincinnati Insurance has helped individuals and businesses navigate tough moments with expertise, personal attention, and independent agents who focus on relationships, not transactions. The Cincinnati Insurance Companies. Let them make your bad day better. Find an agent at CINFIN.com. Everyone has been there. Your team's feedback is scattered across emails, chats, and sticky notes. It's a mess. But PDF Spaces and Adobe Acrobat gives you one collaborative workspace to streamline every file and comment.

46:01Carol Massar:So, if you need six departments to finally agree on a proposal, do that with Acrobat. Need to turn a mountain of feedback into one plan of action? Do that with Acrobat. Want to stop searching for files and finally get everyone on the same page? Do that. Do that. Do that with Acrobat. Learn more at adobe.com slash do that with Acrobat. This is Bloomberg Business Week. Insight from the reporters and editors that bring you America's most trusted business magazine. Plus, global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio.

46:42Carol Massar:Plenty ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including a read on the consumer from the CEO of the Buy Now Pay Later company, Afterpay. Plus, more from the recent World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, the discussions on creating affordable housing and tackling issues in the global supply chain. And the sunglasses at Davos seen around the world, courtesy of one European leader. All of that to come. First up, though, as CEOs are trying to navigate geopolitical tensions around the globe, we wanted to get a gut check on the C-suite and what the top business leaders are thinking.

47:15Carol Massar:Someone we always turn to for that is Samadis Santanis. He is chairman and chief executive officer of Synergy Maritime Holdings. He's also founder, chairman and CEO of United Maritime Corporation. The two firms together, they're micro caps. They're traded in the U.S. Together, they have a total of 25 ships. They carry grains, wheat, corn, steel, copper oil and more all over the world. We spoke to you last over the summer in July. And that was a time of geopolitical tension, too. but it was a different type of geopolitical tension. Are things more or less stable, in your view, than they were then?

47:49Well, certainly they're less stable. I mean, you have so many things going on around the world. You have disruptions, you have potential wars, all these things happening. And you have all this new military drive that people need to start building things again, which is not just for real estate, but you need it for strategic reasons, defense and all that. So, you know, shipping and raw materials of steel, bauxite, iron ore, and coal, they become more and more relevant all the time.

48:19Carol Massar:So tell us what you're seeing. Like, I remember doing a trip to India during the financial crisis and trying to understand, you know, you got a great view of this being an emerging market and driving somewhere in the middle of the night and seeing all the big trucks and really understanding the build and the moving of materials around. You have such a great vantage point of that. So with the stuff that's going on around the globe, whether it's from the White House, whether it's from other regions, whether it's China, what has shifted in terms of where the ships are going and where activity is happening and what's being moved around?

48:52Well, first of all, you have a commodities rally, right? I mean, you have gold, you have silver, you have tin, you have copper, you have all these prices surging to these levels. and I strongly believe that you're going to see aluminum, you're going to have steel and all these things coming up a lot because demand is so strong for these products.

49:11Carol Massar:So there's more movement of all of this around? I strongly believe you're going to have a lot of movement for that because it's not just a good to have real estate or a house, but it's strategic, it's defense, it's military, so you're going to have a lot of these things going on. On top of that, you also have the AI. You need to upgrade the power grids. You need to create all these data centers. And all these things require vast amounts of metals that we transport. So it's pretty much important these days. The geopolitical disruptions as far as what's happening out there while the ships are out there, have you had to make changes to routes as a result of any issues, as a result of countries' military doing operations in certain places?

49:53We saw the disruptions around Venezuela in that region, just to commercial airlines, for example, when Nicolas Maduro was brought to the United States. Have you been affected by any of that? Well, of course. I mean, Red Sea has been out of the question for more than a year now. Black Sea is out of the question because of missiles going on board ships. So we tend to avoid this kind of area. So the more places you avoid, the more diversions you have for the ships, the longer distances you make and the more ships you need. So freight rates go up, unfortunately.

50:22Carol Massar:What are your biggest costs? Is it, give us an idea. I mean, these ships are not cheap. Walk us through some of the dynamics or the financials here. Well, inflation is everywhere, right? Building ships today has surged a lot because, you know, for all these raw materials, you need to build the ships. And then you have fuel, but fuel has been quite stable, I must say. Yeah. But building the ship has actually gotten way more expensive. That's how it is. And that's also strategic. I mean, China has been building a lot of ships recently and prices keep going up and up all the time. So, you know, the US at a certain point need to start building ships.

50:56Carol Massar:Are you building? We are building some ships, yes. Okay. Yes, in China and Japan. You are? Yes. Okay. But the U.S. is not? No, you don't see a lot of shipbuilding activity here. Well, the president hopes there will be some military shipbuilding activity here. We all hope that there's going to be some shipbuilding activity here as well, but we're just going to wait and see when that's going to take place. Do you think the U.S. can build the ships that the president wants to see? Well, there's nothing that the U.S. Or that you want to buy? There's nothing that the US cannot do, to be honest. It's just going to be a matter of cost and time.

51:30So we're just going to wait and see. Hey, speaking of that, in the US over the last year, we've seen a push toward bringing manufacturing back to the United States, the tariffs that have gone into effect, the tariffs that have been used as a cudgel against countries to get what the president wants. In your view, does that eventually lead to fewer goods traded between countries, to fewer the less of a need for your services? It should but it doesn't happen. Global trade has been going up year after year. You have all these container ships actually being ordered and built and everything. So in theory that's a very correct statement but in practical terms I think global trade just keeps going up every year after year and it's unstoppable.

52:16Why is it unstoppable? Because you need infrastructure. So in order to create it's not just consumer goods. Consumer goods is only a part of shipping right? All the heavy things, which is oil, oil products, metals, iron ore, coal, bauxite, and all that. I mean, that keep increasing year after year all the time.

52:33Carol Massar:What's the biggest part of your business in terms of the stuff that you move around? It's mostly iron ore, and we do a lot of bauxite and coal. So we move around 20 million tons of raw materials every year. And that's a lot. Long hauls. That is long hauls. I am also curious about, in terms of trade routes, I think, you know, with the U.S. kind of pushing back and tariffs and so on and so forth, Are you seeing more trade just in general between China and other parts of the world? Yes. Where are you seeing increases? Where are you seeing decreases? Well, China has been increasing their imports in iron ore and coal year after year.

53:06China has been producing 56 % of the global steel production. So wherever you need steel, you need to get it mostly from China. Right. That's how it works. You have about$5 trillion of committed infrastructure projects globally. So that's a huge amount of steel you're going to require in the next few years, excluding data centers and everything associated with that. So you're going to require a lot of steel in the next few years, and China has been very well prepared in importing a lot of foreign materials.

53:32Carol Massar:But I think we're also – that's fascinating because it's just a reminder of supply chains, where things are, right? Yeah. But what about in terms of the pushback? Is there more trade between China and Europe? I think we're trying to assess what are the relationships around the world. And the U.S. continues, it feels like some say, to alienate certainly its allies in other parts of the world. But is that really happening from what you see in terms of the activity? Well, all this tariff talk and all this port use and everything that has been in discussions for the last year or so, that hasn't really slowed down China at all.

54:06China has been importing big quantities of iron ore and bauxite and all that. So year after year, they continue to increase their production of steel and aluminum and all the strategic metals that you're going to require for the future. So, yes, China is still a very vital part of the global commodities and especially the metals. We're speaking with Stamatis Santanis. He is the chairman and CEO of Synergy Maritime Holdings and founder, chairman and CEO of United Maritime Corporation. You transport oil around the world. We transport mostly iron ore, coal and bauxite. That's what we do. But also...

54:44Yeah, we used to have a few oil transportation ships, tankers, but we sold them a few years ago at the peak. Would you get back into it? The answer is yes. At the next part of the cycle, we will definitely get back into tankers. What part of the cycle? Well, it's all times high right now. So asset values and freight rates are at this peak of all peaks. So we will wait for the right time in the cycle. Maybe it's going to be next year or the year after. And we're definitely going to get back into that. Do you see Venezuela as an opportunity for you to ship oil from to other parts of the world? Venezuela, it's still not a big part of the transportation of oil globally.

55:20They only do like a few hundred thousand barrels per day. So that's not really important and vital right now. Maybe it's going to get to a point in the next few years, and I'm hopeful they will. But so far, we don't really see them as making any material difference in seaborne oil.

55:35Carol Massar:You're just back from Davos. Yes. Talk to us about what you heard on the ground, what you thought was interesting. We've just talked with our David Weston of Wall Street Week and, you know, how so much of what the conversations evolved once again around President Donald Trump. But I'm just curious your take on the ground and what you were hearing and seeing. Well, it's all about infrastructure. It's all about defense. It's all about military spending. It's all about alliances. so people don't talk so much about you know, diversion and inclusiveness and all these things anymore they talk about strategic stuff so it's completely different I mean, the narrative in Davos it's all about the future of alliances of infrastructure, real estate I was at a dinner with Eric Trump the other day and he all talked about you know, about the projects of the family in the Middle East and how spectacular that he expects to be in the next few years.

56:31So you hear a lot about real estate, infrastructure, and of course, defense and alliances. That's what you hear.

56:37Carol Massar:What are you doing with the Middle East that you can tell? I mean, it just seems like they're certainly looking to diversify their economy, investing in sports, investing in lots of different projects, technology, and so on and so forth. How do you see it in terms of what they're doing and the activity? The Middle East is a spectacular place. That's all I can say. I mean, the amount of development you see there. Everything's modern, everything's new, everything's in huge scale. So I'm very hopeful that the next few years, the Middle East, especially the UAE and Saudi Arabia, will continue to be investing hundreds of billions of dollars into these beautiful, big new buildings.

57:16Carol Massar:Stamatis, just got 30 seconds left here. A word or two that you would describe the global economy right now or for 2026 as you see it? Well, it will continue to be very, very challenging. I think that we're going to see way more important disruptions happening and trading routes being kind of broken down. But shipping has always been very agile to adopt in whatever geopolitical or what have you changes has happened. We did COVID, we did everything, so it's going to be fine. That was Stamatis Santanas, Chairman and CEO of Synergy Maritime Holdings and Founder, Chairman and CEO of United Maritime Corporation.

57:54Carol Massar:Coming up next, consumers are shifting away from credit cards, at least some are, and towards debt or really those buy now pay leader programs. So what does that say about the health of the consumer? What kind of activity are we seeing around that? That's next. This is Bloomberg.

58:14Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Smart Talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's chairman and CEO, Arvind Krishna, and I asked him, how can companies use AI to its fullest potential to create smarter business? My one advice to them, pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example?

58:39Carol Massar:If anybody has more than 10 % of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind. If anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software 30 % more productive today, with the goal of being 70 % more productive. Yeah. Wow. So we are not asking our clients to be the first experiment on it. We say, you can leverage what we did. We are happy to bring out all our learnings, including what needs to change in the process, because the biggest change is not technology. It's getting people to accept that there's a different way to do things. To listen to the full conversation, visit ibm.com slash smarttalks.

59:31Carol Massar:If you follow markets, you know the value of long-term thinking. You plan, you diversify, you prepare for volatility. But even the best strategies can't prevent every bad day. For more than 75 years, Cincinnati Insurance has helped individuals and businesses navigate tough moments with expertise, personal attention, and independent agents who focus on relationships, not transactions. The Cincinnati insurance companies. Let them make your bad day better. Find an agent at c-i-n-f-i-n dot com. You need to make a huge presentation in an hour. Adobe Acrobat uses AI to take all your documents and generate a presentation with a single click.

1:00:17Carol Massar:Build slides quickly and streamline the process. Need a last-minute pitch deck? Do that with Acrobat. Need to level up your presentation design? Do that with Acrobat. You have 30-plus documents that need to be simplified into a proposal. Do that. Do that. Do that with Acrobat. Learn more at adobe.com slash do that with Acrobat. This is Bloomberg Businessweek with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. President Donald Trump is taking aim at the credit card industry, demanding a 10 % cap on interest rates for one year. It's something he mentioned as well at Davos. I'm asking Congress to cap credit card interest rates at 10 percent for one year.

1:01:03And this will help millions of Americans save for a home. They have no idea they're paying 28 percent. They go out there a little late in their payment and they end up losing their house. It's terrible. The president also targeting the interchange fees that businesses must pay to banks when customers use credit cards at checkout by endorsing legislation known as the Credit Card Competition Act.

1:01:25Carol Massar:For some context on credit card fees and a look at the buy now, pay later economy, we caught up with Nick Molnar. He's the co-founder and CEO of Afterpay. Hey, I just want to start with your view on a couple of different things. We'll pull out and talk about the business in a second. But we got to start with this idea of 10 % caps on credit card companies. What the president has been talking about, our team reporting last week that B of A and Citi are actually exploring options that could satisfy a 10 % cap on credit card rates, at least for a year. If the president were to follow through with this, and we've heard the banks really push back, what would that mean for Afterpay?

1:02:05What would that mean for your business? Yeah, I mean, look, it's a really interesting question. And it kind of takes me back to when we started the business. We started the business because we saw a fundamental shift, particularly by millennials at the time, post 2008 financial crisis, millennials stopped using credit cards, they all moved to debit cards. And so the way we wanted to design our product was to disable someone's account the moment they're late on one payment, which no other credit card naturally does, because income's made when someone goes late. And secondly, we flipped the economics on its head, where we primarily charge the consumer a fee, not so the merchant a fee, not the consumer, which again is kind of the fundamental opposite of how the traditional financial services ecosystem works.

1:02:55So I am I'm excited to to see some of these kind of millennial responsible behaviors starting to flow through. But the positives of buy now, pay later, I believe, are really well understood by the U.S. consumer today. Well, but there maybe they're well understood in your view by some consumers, there are still a lot of skeptics out there. And I think, you know, everybody gets concerned when they understand the credit crises that consumers have faced in the past, when they hear this idea of extending credit in untraditional ways. And, you know, a bank would argue, OK, well, that's why we actually do have credit card rates that are so high, because we're the ones taking out the risk here.

1:03:33Where's the risk for you if somebody doesn't pay back? Yeah. So if a consumer takes out a transaction and they don't pay back, we wear the risk and our losses have consistently been below 1%, which is significantly lower than the broader financial services industry. I mean, even when we look at kind of Black Friday, Cyber Monday transactions, we're already seeing those transactions being paid back. 96 % of our installments were paid back on time. 98 % of our transactions incurred zero late fees. And so So you're seeing this really responsible behavior continue to prevail through our book. And when we look at our brands being Afterpay, Cash App, Square, we've now lent over$200 billion around the world.

1:04:22And so to be able to lend differently, to lend responsibly, and to continue to see the consumer engage with us in incredibly responsible ways is really great to see.

1:04:34Carol Massar:How do you, though, determine whether or not to allow someone to participate? And I guess because I feel like there's buy now, pay later popping up everywhere. You can buy so many different things. So where's the aggregator to say, all right, this person, you know, credit cards, there's credit reporting agencies, right? And so you have an idea of how much debt. But we don't, I don't think have that yet on buy now, pay later. So how do you know whether or not to allow someone to do this on your platform? Yeah, I mean, again, from personal experience, when I arrived in the U.S., I didn't anticipate that I had to take out a credit card to build a credit score.

1:05:18It's a really U.S.-orientated situation. There's almost 100 million Americans that don't have access to affordable credit today. and our ability to start consumers off with small limits. As they pay back on time, we give them more flexibility. And if they go late, we disable their account and we reduce their limits. It's really put us in a great place to engage in this next generation consumer. If you think about it, this millennial consumer now using a debit card, not a credit card, they are very much anonymous to the credit bureau, but many of them are now approaching some of their peak earning years.

1:05:58And so you have really seen this fundamental shift away from credit cards to debit cards led by the millennial cohort and even more popular in Gen Z. And, you know, these consumers exercising really responsible behavior. They prefer to spend their own money as opposed to taking out compounding debt. Nick, I want to talk a little bit more about the global consumer and where you're seeing customers actually take money out. Block recently said it's provided more than$200 billion to customers in global lending across credit products. Talk to us about which products are the products where you're seeing interest.

1:06:33Borrow, Afterpay, Square loans. Where is the actual growth here? Yeah. So we're seeing, as you mentioned, we have working capital loans for small businesses through Square. We have our Borrow Lending product through Cash App, and we We have our buy now, pay later product globally through Afterpay, and we're seeing really strong growth in our lending businesses. As I mentioned before, even though we're seeing incredibly strong accelerated lending growth, we're seeing our losses stay at some of the lowest levels that we've seen to date. So really responsible lending behavior, even though the number has now exceeded$200 billion of lending.

1:07:12Each of those products in their own right lent differently. We had Square lending against a seller's actual sales they're processing through the platform. We have Cash App lending against money that's moving through the Cash App ecosystem. And I've spoken extensively about how Afterpay works, which is flipping the economics on its head and charging the retailer a small fee instead of the consumer. Each of those components has been why we're seeing such strong engagement with our lending products across all of our brands.

1:07:42Carol Massar:What's the assumption in terms of accounts that will go delinquent? What are your kind of general assumptions in the business? Yeah, so through our afterpay business, as I mentioned before, our losses have sustainably sat below 1%. And, you know, traditional financial services platform would see many multiples of that. The reason why we're able to manage our lending to such great rates is because we disable someone's account their moment they're late on one installment payment. You cannot keep shopping. You cannot revolve in debt. There's no compounding interest associated with our products. And that specific nuance not only sees responsible behavior, but you actually see our consumers illustrating a stronger desire to use Afterpay because our consumers say, you understand us.

1:08:31You understand that we prefer to use a debit card over a credit card. And you've got the checks and balances in place to make sure that I don't get over my skis. And so to be able to see those loss rates, particularly in the present economic environment, is really, really encouraging to see. We're speaking with Nick Molnar, co-founder and CEO of Afterpay. I want to just talk a little bit about the macroeconomic environment over the last year and tariff announcements and what we from the administration. Did that affect demand for Square Loans? Yeah. So on the small business side, we've seen a really strong strength in demand for our working capital loans.

1:09:15And then if I look even just on our consumer side as well, our average order value through Afterpay was up 10 % over the Black Friday, Cyber Monday period as compared to last year. So you are seeing you know, demand come through as consumers are navigating higher interest rates, inflation, etc. And the fact that consumers are moving towards more responsible sources of capital, I really think is illustrating two things. One is that buy now, pay later is genuinely becoming more mainstream, is continuing to grow. But secondly, you know, consumers are getting more nimble and agile into how they're looking for sources of capital, which is different to, you know, what we've historically seen.

1:09:57Carol Massar:Do you expect there to be more competition? We've just got about 30, 40 seconds here now that the administration has become more open to approving bank charters for crypto and fintech firms. A firm in PayPal recently shared they're applied for similar ILC charters to the one that Block holds. So do you anticipate more competition? And again, just got about 40 seconds. Yeah, I mean, as you referenced, Block has Square Financial Services and has had for many years. I do think there's going to be a continued push towards bringing innovative, customer-friendly financial services products across all assets in the banking industry.

1:10:37And so I anticipate that, A, that would just be a fantastic thing for both sellers and consumers. But B, I do believe that we'll continue to see more excitement in the space.

1:10:48Carol Massar:Our thanks to Nick Molnar, the co-founder and CEO of Afterpay. And I have to say these buy now, pay later programs, man, they are everywhere. And it does make me, it's something we brought up with him, that you do wonder the oversight in terms of the aggregate of these programs. But he says people stop, you know, if they have any problems, they're cut off. Yeah, that's true. And I think different generations think about this stuff differently. Like, you know, I grew up with credit cards. You grew up with credit cards. I have to say, I remember when my parents got like kind of the first, like people just didn't do.

1:11:17Carol Massar:My parents paid cash for everything, but there were layaway programs where you would put money on things and you didn't get the goods, though, until you paid it off. Yeah, a little deep tease for something we're going to be talking about in a few weeks. Tom Freston is going to be joining us, the founder of MTV. The beginning of his book is all about his travels all over the world. And he makes a point of talking about when he gets out of business school, he gets approved for the first American Express. And it's such a big deal because he can actually use it around the world. It's not something that he ended up using.

1:11:47But if you think back to the late 60s, early 1970s, it wasn't easy to pay for something in another country.

1:11:54Carol Massar:I remember traveling and getting, what was it that we used to get? You'd go to a bank. Traveler's checks. Traveler's checks. He talks about that too. I remember doing that. Like you think about how the world has changed dramatically. And so you and I talk a lot about fintech and with fintech companies and, you know, throw Bitcoin or the blockchain into this. I think we're trying to figure out how this all fits in and what this means in terms of how we pay for things. I don't carry cash. We got rid of the penny or we're getting it, right? I've just used my phone and I pay for everything. Yeah, it's frictionless, which is what the companies like to say.

1:12:25But I don't know if the Carol Master household loves the idea of it being frictionless.

1:12:29Carol Massar:I think about this a lot. The easier it is to part with money, the worse it is. Well, think about when you – I remember as a kid getting – you'd go on a class trip and you had X amount of dollars. And you had to think about how you spent it or going on a summer vacation and you were given X amount of dollars. And you really thought it through. Whereas here it's like, you know, I just use my phone. It's digital money. Listen, I'm old enough to remember when the App Store came out for Apple. And a lot of analysts at the time were like, it's so easy to actually spend money with this that it's going to be great for Apple, not so great for consumers because, you know, they're just easily separated from their cash.

1:13:04Carol Massar:And I, again, going back to our conversation with Nick Molnar at Afterpay, how many things you go to buy? And they're like, would you like to do this in four installments? It's like, I just want to pay for it. Well, still to come on Bloomberg Businessweek, more highlights from the recent gathering of world leaders in Davos. And how one world leader changed the sunglass game. That's next. This is Bloomberg.

1:13:31Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Smart Talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's chairman and CEO, Arvind Krishna. and I asked him, how can companies use AI to its fullest potential to create smarter business? My one advice to them, pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example?

1:13:55Carol Massar:If anybody has more than 10 % of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind. If anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software 30 % more productive today, with the goal of being 70 % more productive. Yeah. Wow. So we are not asking our clients to be the first experiment on it. We say, you can leverage what we did. We are happy to bring out all our learnings, including what needs to change in the process. Because the biggest change is not technology. It's getting people to accept that there's a different way to do things. To listen to the full conversation, visit ibm.com slash smarttalks.

1:15:06Carol Massar:It isn't just what you planned. It's who shows up. That's where Cincinnati Insurance comes in. For more than 75 years, they've helped individuals and businesses navigate life's toughest moments with care, expertise, and personal attention. Together with independent agents, Cincinnati Insurance focuses on relationships, not transactions. Their approach is grounded in experience, follow-through, and trust built over time. Bad days happen, and when they do, you deserve an insurance partner who understands risk, respects what you've built, and is ready to help you move forward. The Cincinnati Insurance Companies.

1:15:42Carol Massar:Let them make your bad day better. Find an independent agent at c-i-n-f-i-n dot com. You need to make a huge presentation in an hour. Adobe Acrobat uses AI to take all your documents and generate a presentation with a single click. Build slides quickly and streamline the process. Need a last-minute pitch deck? Do that with Acrobat. Need to level up your presentation design? Do that with Acrobat. You have 30-plus documents that need to be simplified into a proposal. Do that. Do that. Do that with Acrobat. Learn more at adobe.com slash do that with Acrobat. This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio.

1:16:29Carol Massar:President Trump has promised to make it easier for Americans to buy homes ahead of the midterm elections as affordability issues take center stage. He's pledged to ban institutional investors from buying single-family homes and at Davos directly spoke to the difficulties in tackling the problem. Every time you make it more and more and more affordable for somebody to buy a house cheaply, you're actually hurting the value of those houses. Now, if I want to really crush the housing market, I could do that so fast that people could buy houses. But you would destroy a lot of people that already have houses.

1:17:04That was President Trump earlier today. Jonathan Reckford knows what it takes to build affordable housing. He's CEO of Habitat for Humanity. He joins us from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Jonathan, good to have you on the program. We spoke a lot last week about institutional investors owning single-family homes in the U.S. and the data are out there. It's actually a small percentage of the homes in the U.S. are owned by institutional investors. In your view, would banning these folks from owning single-family homes ease the housing crisis in the U.S.? Well, first, we're just pleased the administration is talking about housing.

1:17:41And I think the housing crisis is such a huge issue in the U.S. and globally. And I'm glad it's on the agenda here at Davos as well. And we would say that now that middle-class families, children cannot afford housing, the more invisible housing crisis has become visible. We haven't taken a stance on the issue that you've just raised. We still want to look at the details. There are certain markets, nationally it's a very small percent, there's certain markets like Atlanta, Charlotte, a few others where it's a meaningful percentage, but that's only one small piece of the broader housing issue. And what we really have is a supply problem.

1:18:18We have a massive shortage, particularly at the low end of the market starter homes. And so our view is creating a lot more supply on the starter home side would not actually damage home values in the middle and upper ends because we have such a shortage right now. In fact, if we work more on the demand side without increasing supply, we'll drive house costs up further and it won't really solve the housing crisis. So we need a really a little bit of everything. We do need demand side solutions, but the most important thing is to increase the supply of houses at the low end of the market.

1:18:48Carol Massar:You know, I don't always understand. I mean, I understand giving developers breaks and tax breaks to build in certain areas that maybe need some juice and some help, right, to get it kind of back and bring back a community, bring back a city, bring back a town. But I'm amazed at, like, tax abatements that still get given in areas where things are good without any maybe provisions to make sure that there is housing for everybody in the community, not just the wealthier folks. So how do we really fix this? I mean, I just don't understand what's the incentive to developers or builders to really help out here?

1:19:30Carol Massar:And is that what it needs to be? I do think it requires incentives, but also requirements. And the best model for anywhere in the world is mixed income, mixed use, where families can be close to where they need to go to work and where they have economic opportunity. But we haven't planned that way. And I think there's no magic bullet, but there are a whole series of things that can help. And I agree with you, if there are incentives that should come with expectations of mixed income or that they're, because the math is tough. COVID was kind of a perfect storm on affordability. So the gap between what it costs to build a unit of housing for Habitat or for a private developer and what a family can afford is the widest in history.

1:20:11So we do have a real math problem. And I think there are different ways to solve it. We've seen at the local and state level, first, you can make it faster and easier to build. That doesn't cost cities a lot of money, but can make a big difference for builders and developers. You can address zoning at the local level, get rid of parking minimums, increase density, get rid of minimum lot sizes. A lot of 1980s strategies that aren't relevant today that would increase supply. You can do accessory dwelling units. At the federal level, I think incentives, but incentives tied to building at the starter home level and increasing the supply.

1:20:44So discounted financing. The Senate has a good bill we've supported on the road to housing. The House has a strong bill as well. I think there is bipartisan support for doing something on housing. So we're enthusiastic. The administration wants to support it. We know it's one of the biggest drivers right now. One in three families in the world lives in inadequate or substandard housing. one in six families in America is spending over half their income on housing right now. So the level of cost burdened families is the highest it's ever been. And a lot of historically affordable markets have more than doubled over the last six years.

1:21:19Our thanks to Jonathan Reckford, CEO of Habitat for Humanity. Now something a little lighter to end this weekend. I mentioned it's not something we do all the time, but this is a very Bloomberg angle on a story that everybody was talking about. The blue aviator sunglasses seen from Davos around the globe.

1:21:36Carol Massar:Yeah, this was really fun to do. Well, the world's leaders brought together in Switzerland to solve the toughest problems. But I got to say, what caught a lot of attention was one luxury pair of shades worn by French President Emmanuel Macron, making headlines and becoming a hot item and in demand, according to the company that makes them. For more, we head to Italy and to Stefano Fulciere, the CEO of iVision Tech. It's the parent company of the French luxury brand, Henri Julien, which made the glasses. Stefano, good to have you on the program. Take us through what happened since President Macron wore those glasses.

1:22:11What did you see in terms of demand? What did you see in terms of people buying them? Tell us everything. Yeah, good evening and thank you to have invited me. So I think that the effect is like a wow effect. It was amazing because from Tuesday, our website went in crash different times. we have received a lot of phone calls because everybody wants to buy something like that you know and so they have realized that the the eyewear is from Mary Julien and so we are covered for full of requests and now we have immediately restart to make power for the production of this model because everybody all over the world wanted so you know the sales impact reaction was also amazing and we have sold in one day like the same quantity of one year of production of this model.

1:23:00Wow. Which is how many?

1:23:02Carol Massar:Can you share with us what that number is? Yeah, sure. We are not talking about very big numbers because we are a luxury brand so we produce this eyewear that is in gold lamination so very particular and now we are more than 200 pieces in only one day for this model and so the demand is we receive orders every minute so we have blocked the PayPal three times so we need every time to make a restructuration of the website so he's amazing what's happening you know shares the company up 40 % so far this month today they're up more than 21 % I mean often right listen did you know that he owned a pair and I'm just curious tell us about these glasses What are they made of?

1:23:45Carol Massar:I mean, how much do they go for? So everything happens in 2024 because we have received a call from the Elysee, from the assistant of the president, and they want to buy one because they want to make a present for a minister in the period of G20. So I remember that I have received this call. And so when we have received this call, we say, wow, this is the president. So we have to do something more and we want to make a present also to give you something. but the assistant told us okay please okay but we want to pay so you know they try to respect that and they ask us to have everything made in France so they want something you know every phase because you want to represent a product from the history of France and I have to tell to you that you know Henri Julien is an historical brand the company is born in 1921 and is a hundred years company.

1:24:40And so when we have sent them, we didn't have any news after that. And we recognize between our customers because some customers during Monday, they start to send me pictures and they say, is it that an original yen? And they say, yes. And so on Tuesday, everything happens, you know. So I want to talk a little bit about supply chains here, because what is notable about these frames is that they are made in France. In this day and age, most sunglasses are, and most glasses are actually made, at least the ones that come to the U.S. are actually made in China. And I'm curious about the supply chain here in a conversation where we're talking a lot about domestic manufacturing in the United States.

1:25:23That's been a big focus of President Trump. How do you keep manufacturing in France and not outsource it to other parts of the world where it would be a lot cheaper? Yeah, thank you very much for this question. Because I would like to start from the beginning because our company was born six years ago because we have started in October 2020, so in the middle of the COVID period, because we have bought the Saffilo plant in Udine, so one hour from Venice. And the idea is to restart the production of the Iwer in Friuli. So Friuli is our region where I live. and you know in that period the Saffilo has closed the plant and we restart all the production inside and we have a huge capacity here in Italy because our main company in Italy has a capacity about 1 million high wear per year so if we are talking about our company Arie Julien in France we produce like 1000 pieces per year so we have a very niche market and for this type of production and what we have done the idea when we have bought a Régoulienne in October 2023 so after our listing in the stock exchange we have decided to create like a boutique so our idea was to produce in France only some small pieces talking about the historical process everything handcraft with a lot of faces and I would like also to say to you that this eyewear is in gold lamination so what is the particularity of that that inside you can find gold and so it's a very precious material and the final price is not too amazing because we are talking about 650 euros each and talking about gold is a very competitive price but this is something that represent you know the story of the French production and finally I believe that we are based in the two most made in important all over the world because if we are talking about highway production made in France is very important, like made in Italy.

1:27:25So, you know, in France, there is the Jura area that is very famous, like in Italy that we have Cadore, and Cadore is very famous for the eyewear companies, you know. So we have a lot of knowledge, a lot of people, and to create a good eyewear, you need also to have a good staff, good people. Our people inside has 25 years of experience to create eyewear. So eyewear is not really easy to produce something like that.

1:27:49Carol Massar:That was Stefano Folcher, the CEO of iVision Tech. And that wraps up the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thank you so much for joining us. I think Tim is trying to order those sunglasses. They're expensive. How much? They're in the many hundreds of dollars. Oh, okay. You know, made in Europe. I love it. Yeah, they're pretty cool. He looked pretty good. He did look pretty cool. Can I just say that? Yeah. I do have a pair of aviators, but they don't have that blue tint, and they were definitely not made in France. I got to say, if you don't have a pair of aviators, I mean, you should.

1:28:15Who are you? Who are you? Not Tom Cruise, obviously. Who are you? Yeah.

1:28:18Carol Massar:Or Joe Biden. It's true. Be sure to tune in to Bloomberg Business Week daily Monday through Friday starting at 2 p.m. Wall Street time on Bloomberg Radio and on Sirius XM channel 121. You can also watch our daily broadcast on YouTube. Just search Bloomberg Global News. We're simulcast on Bloomberg Originals. Available at Bloomberg.com slash originals and streaming platforms including Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung TV Plus and more. Find our Bloomberg Business Week podcast at Bloomberg.com, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. And the latest edition of the magazine. It's available on newsstands now at Bloomberg.com and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.

1:28:52Carol Massar:Have a good and safe weekend, everyone. I'm Carol Masser. Stay warm. And I'm Tim Stenevec. Stay with us. Today's top stories and global business headlines are coming up right now.

1:29:05Carol Massar:Hello, I'm Michelle Hussain. And for more than 20 years, I was at the BBC. But all the time I was delivering the headlines, I wanted to go further than the news of the day. To spend more time with the people shaping our world. And that's what I'm doing here on this podcast. Speaking to people from Nigel Farage... Russia needs to be taught a lesson. ...to tech journalist Kara Swisher. And the tech industry is running wild. You know, they've gotten what they wanted and they've seen a huge run-up in their stock prices. This will be a place where every weekend you can count on one essential conversation to help make sense of the world.

1:29:48So please join me, listen and subscribe to The Michelle Hussain Show from Bloomberg Weekend, wherever you get your podcasts. You certainly ask interesting questions.