Navigated to Daybreak Weekend: Retail Preview, UK Budget, China PMI - Transcript

Daybreak Weekend: Retail Preview, UK Budget, China PMI

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.

Speaker 2

This is Bloomberg Daybreak Weekend, our global look at the top stories in the coming week from our Daybreak anchors all around the world.

Straight Ahead on the program, we look ahead to earnings from IT Hardware, Giant Dell, and retail ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.

I'm Nathan Hager in Washington.

Speaker 3

I'm Carolin hepget here in London, where we're looking ahead to be a case highly anticipated or too budget.

Speaker 4

I'm det Prisner looking at why China's economy continues to struggle.

Speaker 1

That's all straight ahead on Bloomberg Daybreak Weekend on Bloomberg eleven three year, New York, Bloomberg ninety nine to one, Washington, DC, Bloomberg ninety two nine Boston, DAB Digital Radio, London, Syrias XM one one, and around the world on Bloomberg Radio, dot Com and the Bloomberg Business app.

Speaker 2

Good day to you.

I'm Nathan Hager.

We begin today's program with more tech earnings.

Yep, we're not quite done with them just yet.

Well here from IT Hardware Giant Dell.

It opens it's third quarter books after the market close on Tuesday.

Ahead of it We're joined by Wu jin Ho, senior technology analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence.

Great to speak with you, and I guess we're sort of coming off the glow of Nvidia's earnings this past week, Right, does the AI chip giant inform how you're thinking about what we could get from Dell this week?

Speaker 5

Yeah, Hey, Nathan, thanks for having me on.

You know, the Nvidia results are actually quite positive for Dell's AI story.

You know, there's a twenty billion dollar sales outlook for fiscal twenty six.

There is maybe a little bit rooper upside in the third quarter results and as well as the fourth quarter outlook and the twenty five The fiscal twenty five twenty seven outlook looks very promising as well, given the momentum.

Now, the issue is its profitability, Right, the AI story AI service have not been the most profitable for the industry.

Dell has actually done a fairly good job and we'll see where they are on the profit margin side.

Speaker 2

Well, does that tell you then that we could see the AI data center business for Dell overshadow it's more traditional PC business.

Speaker 5

Well, look, that's going to be one of the data points that investors are going to be pointing to there's actually a lot of controversy on Dell heading into the print.

For the traditional businesses, memory pricing has come in focus.

You know, the DRAM chips that goes into your PCs as well as the servers that's been up three hundred percent over the last month or so, and that could potentially not only affect margins in the near term, but also the pricing dynamics.

And given how elastic in elastic that the PCs can be, that could affect the man.

Speaker 2

Well, how could Dell potentially get past some of the drag on its margins that you see from the AI servers.

Speaker 5

Yeah, it's really tough to say.

It's probably going to be very, very tough.

And they actually did a good job out of their recent analyst day on keeping their guidance on AI server margins low.

They've guided to admit the high single digit AI server margin, which is a very sobering outlook and a realistic outlook.

So if they do a better job on the AI server side, on the margin profitability side, there is room for upside, but it's already baked into expectations.

So I'm comforted by that now.

Speaker 2

In your note leading up to these earnings.

You say you're looking for signs of improvement from Dell when it comes to operational changes.

Can you walk us through what you're thinking there.

Speaker 5

Yeah, absolutely so, a couple of things that Dell has been doing over the past couple of quarters of streamlining the operations, cutting costs, and they actually were on the forefront on some of the cost actions in terms of relative to the growing AI mix, And I do think there's scope for Dell to maintain a high single digit operating margin profile despite a growing AI mix.

Speaker 2

Now, of course, a lot of people who follow this company closely know that the federal government is a pretty important customer for Dell.

Of course we've had a government shut down.

Now that the government's back open, how could that feed into the outlook for Dell?

Speaker 5

Yeah, so, well, from from a results perspective, you know, there might be a chance that it might be a drag on earnings.

Now, No, the outlook is going to be a little iffy in the sense that it may take a little bit, little bit or some time for the federal government to really start ramping up their spending engine, So there might be some headwind on the growth outlook.

But it's going to be just a temporary blip in my mind, and should the focus will turn to fiscal twenty twenty seven guidance thereafter.

Speaker 2

And in terms of the AI business overall, does that point to opportunities for Dell?

Or is the competition just too fierce out there?

Speaker 5

No, you know, I will tell you all the AI server vendors have been very aggressive in terms of winning the footprint.

Among the AI server vendors to have stood out, super Micro and Dell being the other one.

I do think that of you know, of the hardware vendors are that are out there, Dell is probably one of the better position to win more global global footprint sales.

And you know, good back to you margin question that could help the margins as other players decide to back out.

Speaker 2

Appreciate this, Thank you so much.

That is wou Jin Hoe, Senior technology analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence.

We move next to the retail space.

A couple names in that sector open their books on Tuesday as well.

That would be Cohle's and Abercrombie and Fitch.

We're also expecting overall retail sales numbers that would have come out sooner if not for the government shutdown September figures are due out Tuesday as well.

Busy times for Mary Ross Gilbert of Bloomberg Intelligence.

She's a senior equity analyst who covers retail.

It is so great to have you with us as well.

Of course, we've been hearing from so many of the retail giants lately.

We got target results that were kind of different from Walmart's results.

What does that tell us about what we could be getting this week?

Mary, So, Nathan, it's.

Speaker 6

A great question, and I think what we're going to see come Tuesday, I think Abercrombie actually could have a miss and it's really going to be on their gamesake, and we might have you know, and this is based on Bloomberg Second Measure transaction data.

We might have less of an increase on the Hollerster side of the brand, so that could also impact their results.

But with regard to Coals, Coals, we think they probably need expectations.

They're looking for a like a round of four or five percent decline in sales because they're still trying to get their assortments right.

And then of course operating margin is expected to drop and it's pretty low as it is.

It's already in the low single digits, so you know, Coals really has a lot of a lot to get right, and that's going to be a big focus how they're positioned for holiday and where their comp sales are on a monthly basis, because we did see in July that they were flat, so there was encouragement that maybe those sales could improve with the third quarter.

So we'll see that when they go to report on Tuesday.

Speaker 2

Let's hone in a little bit more on Coals because this is one of those kind of departments store or is that sort of feeds to all ends of the retail spectrum, doesn't it whether you're a value conscious consumer or someone who's more willing to spend on the high end.

Speaker 6

Yeah, they do.

They really skewed to the lower end consumer, you know, really on the value segment, as you pointed out, And one of the merchandising mistakes that they made last year is that they really they cut back on private label and that was really a good category for them.

The brands that they have, the private brands like so Sonoma, really resonate with their customers and so bringing those back, they've already started to see a boost in their sales because of that.

The other thing they did was they got rid of or honed back on petite sizing, and that was another very very important category for them having that exercising, So bringing all that back, they're already seeing a lift and it's also higher margins, so that's also helping them on the margin side.

So we haven't seen the erosion that we thought we would with tariffs, so they've really made no comments on tariffs having an impact.

So that's going to be, you know, a big focus.

But really, you know, Macy's is going to come in the following week and we think we're going to see better trends there because we think their strategy going in and bringing back service of bringing in more relevant brands is really starting to show some traction there.

And we should see potentially positive comp sales come out of Macy's for the go forward business, because that's really the focus there.

Dillard's already reported and they came in with a very nice three percent increase in comp sales, So a good sign for department stores.

Speaker 2

And there are probably some investors who have memories of the scandal surrounding the previous CEO of Coles.

Has the department store gotten past that.

Speaker 6

I think they have real The current interim CEO that they have seems to be doing a really good job very quickly getting things back into the store that matter.

For example, they're going to have fine jewelry and over twenty five percent of the stores.

I mean, yeah, they need to have it in the vast majority of the stores for the holiday season.

But it's a big improvement from when they brought in so fora and they did it as a replacement of jewelry, not something you can really do because that's a key gifting category for consumers during the holidays and other key gifting seasons.

So he's making some decisions very quickly that are showing green shoots of improvement there, and I think that is encouraging for Cohle's.

Speaker 2

And let's turn in the time we have left to Abercrombie and Fitch.

You mentioned some of the challenges that some of its specific brands could be facing.

Talk us a little bit more through that and how name brand apparel is faring overall in this current economic environment.

Speaker 6

Yeah, so, Nathan, Actually, overall, I would say apparel overall looks to be very strong, especially for those that are executing and if you look on let's say the off price because we had TJX report and they had great numbers, So that just goes to show you they're carrying all the name brands and the consumers love it, so they're flocking to off price.

But going back to Abercrombie, Abercrombie, the namesake brand, has posted four years of double digit comp sales increases, so we're now cycling those four years and thus why their sales are coming in lower year over year on a comp sales basis.

So it's really hard to keep bringing in more newness, more excitement to keep that going.

And their core customer there are really the millennials.

Their Hollister brand has really shows that that's still performing well.

Now is it performing as good as analysts expect based on the data, We're not so sure, but that's something we're going to look for next Tuesday when they go to report their results.

And Hollister really caters to the gen Z customer, and that customer, by the way, loves to shop in store.

Seventy percent of their sales are generated in store, and Abercrombie sixty percent are generated online.

Speaker 2

Lots to think about in the retail space.

Thank you for this, Mary really appreciate it.

That's Mary Ross Gilbert, senior equity analyst covering retail for Bloomberg Intelligence, and coming up on Bloomberg day Break weekend, we'll look ahead to the UK's highly anticipated autumn budget.

I'm Nathan Hager, and this is Bloomberg.

This is Bloomberg day Break weekend, our global look ahead, the top stories for investors in the coming week.

I'm Nathan Hager in Washington.

Up later in our program, we'll look ahead to key economic data from the world's second largest economy.

But first, in a few days time, UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves will deliver an autumn budget which she helps to lessen the debt burden plaguing the country's finances.

The announcements become one of the most hotly debated fiscal events of the year among investors, economists, and business leaders.

But will Reeves be able to balance party politics and prudence for more, Let's go to London and bring in Bloomberg Daybreak.

You're a banker, Caroline Hepger.

Speaker 3

Nathan, The Labour government has endured a volatile period of pre budget u turns and a political crisis in recent weeks, yet one constant has been the Chancellor's indication that she plans to give herself more breathing space against her own fiscal rules.

However, with an income tax hike appearing to be dropped and Reeves favoring multiple smaller tax increases instead, investors and economists are skeptical about how she can make the numbers out up now.

Trade is embracing for volatility as the deadline to share her economic plans for the country looms large.

The cost of one week options, which now spans the upcoming fiscal event, have climbed to multi month highs for major sterling pairs.

This in recent days as traders pay to protect themselves against potential swings in the pound.

According to Bloomberg strategists, the waters have also been muddied ahead of the announcement.

There are worries that the government could wrong foot the markets.

Reeves's bid to increase the fiscal headroom comes against the backdrop of a significant deterioration in the public finances since her last economic statement back in the spring.

She left herself a slim nine point nine billion pound margin against her spending rules, a buffer near historic lows now.

The latest forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility showed that her position has worsened by about twenty billion pounds since then, driven lower by a productivity downgrade those policy u turns.

I mentioned.

That's as the foots you one hundred had its worst one since August in the lead up to the budget amidst worries about AI being a bubble and signs of corporate pain.

With the somewhat erratic data in the UK showing unemployment rising, it all does raise the bar for the Chancellor as she tries to navigate Britain's finances without spooking investors or exacerbating the flight of global capital.

Camickshire Trevedi, chief FX and Emerging Market Statues at Goldman Sachs, tells me there are a number of factors at play.

Speaker 7

Look, I think it's a really interesting juncture for the UK.

I think the inflation released, the fact that it has start, you know, come down, alongside some of the weaker labor market data that you had in the last couple of weeks, I think those are important.

I mean, there's obviously been a lot of back and forth, a lot of uncertainty around you know, exactly what he is and isn't going to be in the budget.

I mean, if you take a step back and think about it from a macro standpoint, irrespective the exact tax and spending decisions that they make, it looks like this is going to be a budget that is going to be fiscally conservative.

Speaker 3

Camik Shire Trevedi, Chief FX and Emerging Market Strategists at Goldman Sachs speaking there to me and Stephen Coat on Bloomberg Radio.

Speaker 5

Well.

Speaker 3

Also part of the equation are the political pressures facing the Chancellor, who is attempting to unite what seems like a fragmented parliamentary Labor Party.

The delicate balance between investors, voters and MPs is something I've been discussing with Bloomberg's Chief UK economist Dan Hanson and our UK politics reporter Joe Mays.

Dan, can I start with you just on the economics.

Firstly, there's been some back and forth about just how big of a fiscal whole Rachel Reeves is facing.

Can you just give us an update on the latest expectations from the Office of Budget Response Stability and what that means.

Speaker 8

Sort of reading between the lines of everything we've heard and particularly from our Bloomberg News colleagues, the number seems to be around twenty billion pounds.

The fiscal slippage, now, that's made up of quite a few things, and actually quite a few offsetting things.

The biggest reason for the whole is that the OBR, which is the UK's fiscal watchdog, is going to reappraise how quickly it thinks the economy can grow in the medium term, in particular how quickly productivity in the UK economy is likely to rise over the next five years.

That is the single biggest factor determining the fiscal forecast, the path of productivity growth.

So if you change that, you play around with the numbers quite significantly, and we think that could blow a twenty billion pound hole in of itself.

In the public finances, interest rates are a little bit higher, there have been some policy u turns that probably adds another ten billions.

That gets you to thirty.

The reason why you then come back to twenty is that the OBER looks like it will also take a look at its wage growth forecast, which is quite low compared to other forecasters, and obviously that gets some money back for the Chancellor.

So I think a reasonable expectation is something in the region of twenty billion pounds.

Speaker 3

So that's the economics.

What about the politics.

We've heard a lot about the political pressure facing the Chancellor as she's preparing for the budget statement.

Where is it coming from?

Speaker 9

Joe Well, I think the political pressure is really around this question of can Reeves afford to do a budget that really annoys labor, MPs and the public, And that really is what she is in line to do because she has to increase taxes, have spending restraints to fill the fiscal hole that Dan just described.

And really the question of this budget has been for me, how aggressively can she fill that hole with things like tax increases, How large can she build her fiscal buffer to give her reading space for the rest of the Parliament.

Now, my sense from the Treasury, you know, about a month ago, was that she was willing to go quite aggressive.

She was really willing to build that fiscal headroom up perhaps up to twenty pounds twenty five and really impressed markets, show markets that she was a very strong, stable chancellor and she hoped she'd be rewarded with lower borrowing costs and that would help her for the rest of the Parliament.

Then we saw this change in the last few weeks where it seemed like, especially with the briefing against where's streeting from number ten and how that immediately shone a light on the leadership of kir Starmer and raised questions about how stable he is, which in turn raises the question about how stable.

Speaker 7

Rachel Reeves is.

Speaker 9

It's such a partnership there that it seems like what happened was they've realized they couldn't go so aggressive with the tax increases, especially touching the manifesto promises around income tax, notsh insurance VAT.

So they've rolled it back to a certain extent to ward off some of that threat from labor MPs.

And that's why we've got this new position where it looks like the manifesto won't necessarily broken.

She will still try and you know, restore her fiscal buffer, perhaps increase it a little bit, but I don't think as much as she might have done before that whole.

Speaker 3

Episode Dan do her plans add up though without major tax hikes increases to the headline rate of income tax.

Speaker 8

What was quite strange about what was being briefed is that they were going to do this too up two down policy where they'd raise income tax by two p but cut national insurance by two p And it seemed to me that if you're going to break the manifesto, you might as well break it big time and really raise some money, because six billion pounds is not a lot of money to raise.

So it seemed like, I understand it was sort of there was an attempt to sort of go through that muddy path of not upsetting labor MPs too much, but it seems like the big revenue raisers are off the table, and that does make it a lot harder to raise the money.

You know, you can look at it now and say, well, if I put capital gains tax, I put that up by one percentage point.

You know that currently raises X, Well I could get a little bit more money.

But what actually happens is that people look at that and move their money elsewhere.

And the tax base is very mobile.

So if you have a lot of small measures with that risk attached, you end up in a world where you struggle to raise you potentially, I should say struggle to raise the money.

There's just a lot more uncertainty.

You know, there's a sort of backloaded in sort of the parlance, the backloaded element to it, which isn't what market's like to see.

They're not like an upfront down payment when it comes to fiscal when it comes to a fiscal adjustment.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Absolutely.

In terms of the pre announcement that you mentioned, the big speech which laid out her economic thesis a couple of weeks ago, did that do more harm than good?

Speaker 9

I think the immediate harm we've seen is that it has created a sense of chaos and loss of control around narrative for this budget, because you've had Reeves clearly preparing the country for one thing and then moving away from that in the you know, the last couple of weeks, and that does give an air of lack of control and wayward government, and that is clearly harmful.

But I think that the kind of counterbalancing point is that she did nevertheless prepare in the minds of voters the idea that the Manifesto could be broken, and now it's like we're heading for a budget where it isn't broken.

And so you can see why the ultimate outcome is a kind of net positive for Reeves in that she can say I haven't broken the manifesto and we still have stable public finances because everything I've announced and we've kept our promises.

So I think ultimately it's landed in a place that isn't awful for Reeves.

And you can see why she did it in that they know the OBR productivity downgrade that Dan just described is very hard to explain, and if Reeves hadn't done that, it would have been lost pretty much entirely on budget day and in the post budget coverage, where all of the newspaper headlines would have been about the taxing increases.

So I think Reas wanted to get out there first and make a case in a moment where the public were focusing on that rather than the tax rises.

Speaker 3

Dan, just if we look forward to the next few days, is there a particular announcement which could spook markets or which would spook markets the most.

Speaker 8

I mean that's hard to any particular one.

It's hard to put nailed down.

I mean, a thing that markets don't want to hear anything about is something that increases inflation.

So any sense that a policy, the policies are or the setup policies I should say, aren't particularly disinflationary, that's going to be a big warning sign for markets and you're only going to get a negative reaction.

I think the other thing, going to Joe's point, it's very hard to know exactly what the market expects in terms of building the headroom against the fiscal rules.

But you know, if she only adds five billion to the headroom, it's not really I mean it's nothing really.

So I still think that I still think there's possibly a rabbit out of the hat whereby Originally the plan was to build twenty five billion pounds of headroom using that income tax rise.

Now maybe it'll be closer to twenty because I think they're, you know, going to Joe's point about politics of this and what's the best path for Reeves.

If there is a strong mark negative market reaction, that's going to be a problem for her as well.

So you know, there's that side of it as well that she's trying to balance as well as the politics.

Speaker 3

My thanks to both of you for joining me.

That is our chief UK economist, Dan Hanson and our UK Politics report at Joe May's.

I'm Caroline Hepgar here in London.

You can catch us every weekday morning for Bloomberg Daybreak.

You up beginning at six am in London.

That's one am on Wall Street.

Speaker 2

Nathan, Thanks Caroline, and coming up by Bloomberg Daybreak Weekend.

We'll look ahead to offish or pm I figures in China.

I'm Nathan Hager, and this is Bloomberg.

This is Bloomberg Daybreak Weekend, our global look ahead, the top stories for investors in the coming week.

I'm Nathan Hager in Washington.

We turned out to China, where there's a question as to whether the economy will hit this year's growth target of five percent.

In the week ahead, Beijing releases it's official PMI figures from more.

Here's Doug Krisner, host of the Daybreak Asia podcast.

Speaker 4

Nathan weak.

Economic momentum in China has persisted from the third quarter into the early part of the fourth quarter, and the slowdown appears to be broad based.

For a closer look, I'm joined by John Liu, Bloomberg Executive editor for Greater China.

John joins us from our studios in Beijing.

John, thank you for being here.

I'd like to start with this PMI data, and I'm curious as to whether we're going to learn anything new regarding the Chinese economy.

Speaker 10

I think the PMI data that we get is going to show a continued weakness in the economy.

Manufacturing PMI has been a contraction for seven consecutive months.

I think we will get an eighth consecutive month.

Services PMI has been very, very close to that fifty point edge between contraction and growth, and I think we will stay there.

There's even a danger that we will slip into contraction for services as well.

Speaker 4

You know, it's interesting that you made that point about services because when I look at some of the more high frequency type data coming out of China, or even the monthly activity data for the most recent month, demand domestically is still struggling.

And I know the government has been trying to figure out a way to address this issue.

Are there any novel ideas that have kind of emerged, or is it basically turning into a bit of a treadmill and going back to the old playbook to try to figure out what approach may be work.

Speaker 10

So I think the situation has actually gotten a little bit worse in the last month or so.

So we got data for the month of October and that showed the thing that really surprised people was a drop off in investment in China, and so investment is almost half of GDP, and so we get investment data that's on a year to date basis.

So when we got the October data, it was for the first ten months of twenty twenty five, So we have to calculate on our own what happened in October, and most economists believe that investment fell eleven percent more than eleven percent in October.

That would be the biggest decline since the beginning of COVID back in twenty twenty.

Speaker 4

Is it a demand issue or is there a problem with the financial system in China where things are becoming a little clogged.

Speaker 10

So it's a combination of a lot of different things.

On one hand, there's been some weakness in exports, and so that means there's less incentive for companies to be investing in new factories, et cetera.

The Chinese government's also been pushing for sort of trying to reduce the capacity problem that we have in China.

There are too many factories turning out too many goods that are all trying to get exported, and that's causing friction with trade partners, not just the US but Europe, with South America, with Africa, with countries around Southeast Asia, and so the government's trying to pull that back.

That's been reducing the impulse to build out factories, to invest at a corporate level.

And at the same time, the government has been pushing local governments, so cities and provincial governments to pay back their debts instead of using the money they have to finance new infrastructure projects.

And so all of those things combined has led to this pullback in investment.

Speaker 4

So everything that you said just now, do we have to place that in the context of a country that is still struggling with deflationary forces.

You mentioned the overcapacity issue.

Yes, that's a part of it.

But I'm wondering whether there is real concern now that China perhaps has entered some sort of deflationary trap.

Speaker 10

I think that is a real concern.

I think the government is trying to address it.

I think that is why this anti evolution campaign has been launched, because the government sees at the root of why China has this deflation problem is there's just too many factories churning out too much stuff, much more in excess of what actual demand there is in China.

And so you either have to export it or all of these companies need to cut prices every month just to compete to get their product out the door.

Speaker 4

So when I think of deflationary traps, I think of the Japanese economy for what amounted to three decades.

Let's talk a little bit about what's going on these days between China and Japan and what appears to be a real diplomatic test for the new Japanese Prime minister.

She anchored China recently with remarks about Tokyo's position on the issue of Taiwan.

Where do you think this ends up?

Speaker 10

So the comment by the new Japanese Prime minister really touched on a red line for the Chinese government, which has for since a civil war in the middle of last century, claimed Taiwan as a part of China.

And so when she said that, when she sort of suggested that Japan might intervene in a potential conflict, that really set off a firestorm here in Beijing.

What happens next?

The Chinese are demanding that the Japanese Prime minister retract her statement, and obviously the Japanese government is going to be extremely reluctant to do that.

And so We're sort of at an impasse at the moment.

We've just had a delegation from Japan travel to Beijing for talks that have essentially yielded nothing, and so going forward, I think you will see more pressure from Beijing.

They've been a advising tourists not to go to Japan, and I think the Japanese will be trying to stand their ground.

Speaker 4

So if you look at the relationship of these two countries, just insofar as trade is concerned, what kind of damage could be done if China were to impose some strict controls on exports to Japan or even products that are imported from the Japanese manufacturers into China.

Speaker 10

So China is Japan's largest trading partner, it is a giant market for As you said, a lot of this equipment and supplies that come into China get put into various different electronics and other products and are either exported to overseas markets or sold within China itself, and so there is a potential for companies like Honda and Toyota and Nissan to lose share in a very important market for them.

At the same time, obviously, China supplies a lot of rare earth to the Japanese as they do the US and Europe, and so that is another lever that Beijing could use.

It could cut off that supplies, that could cripple a lot of the Japanese manufacturing that happens, and so you know, the risks are very high for both both countries.

Speaker 4

I know on the level of tourism that a lot of Chinese tourists end up going to Japan for vacation or holiday.

Is that dynamic beginning to shift.

Speaker 10

So we've had a lot of anecdotal evidence that tour groups are canceling their reservations in Japan, Chinese tour groups.

We've had reporting that shows Chinese state owned companies are telling their employees not to go to Japan.

But at the same time, we also have anecdotal evidence that suggests that, you know, planes traveling from Shahai to Tokyo are still full of tourists.

And so it's until we get more aggregate data, it's really hard to tell cumulatively how much of an impact it will have.

But if this goes on, the longer it goes on, we have to expect that the bigger the drag on the Japanese Economy.

Speaker 4

It will be John will leave it there.

Thank you so very much.

It's always a pleasure.

John lou He is executive editor for Greater chin and Adjoining from Beijing, we go to Singapore next, where in the last week we heard from thought leaders at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum, we spoke with Singapore's Prime Minister, Lawrence Wong.

Here is a portion of the conversation with Bloomberg News editor in chief John Micklethwaite.

Speaker 11

Can I ask about Singapore is a financial hub.

You've had this on rush of money coming here.

You've had this big push to lure people here.

The family offices, you see many of them here, a lot of wealthy people coming here.

And you get two issues from that.

And the first one is this issue of inequality, which I know the Genie coefficient has got better, so.

Speaker 12

That in income terms, in income terms, income.

Speaker 11

Terms getting better, But there is this every time I come here, people talk about inequality more.

Yeah, and I wondered, you've already introduced taxes on luxury cars and properties, but do you see Singapore moving towards other things a capital gains tax for instance.

Speaker 12

Two separate issues really because wealth management Singapore as a financial center.

I think we can grow in terms of wealth management.

Family officers may set up here.

They are not Singaporeans.

They you know, have their officers here.

They manage your fans out of Singapore.

We welcome that it creates jobs for Singaporeans.

I think that's a good thing, and we can explain that to Singaporeans.

Sometimes it creates frictions, especially when their ostentatious shows of and we have just to remind them.

You know, Singapore is a different society.

We are egalitarian.

Our norms are different, please understand, and for the most part, they do tackling wealth inequality where it comes to our people and our population.

That's something we continue to work on, whether it's income or wealth.

We have a range of policies.

It's not just about tax alone, because in Singapore we have the ability to also provide wealth injections.

And a major reason why we can do that is housing.

Everyone owns almost everyone owns their own home.

Majority live in public housing, and when you buy a flat from the housing development bought in Singapore, you get housing equity.

And that's the reason why even at the lower end of bottom twenty percent of households actually they have significant net wealth net asset value because of home ownership.

So that's one way we can continue to fine tune our policies to provide more support and uplift for lower income groups.

We also have a central provident fund, which is Social Security, which is the individual's own retirement nest eight, which we do top ups from time to time.

So our tool sets are not limited.

I know there's a lot of interest again Bloomberg's favorite question for me capital gtcept against tax wealth text.

A lot of questions about tex but our our talkits are not limited to tax alt We also have wealth transfers.

Speaker 11

I'll take that as a maybe a lot of just the other issue about a lot of wealthy people coming here is that not all of them have been virtuous, if I can put it that way.

You know you had.

Speaker 12

The money laudry, illicit flows.

Speaker 11

Yes, and you had the accusations about within the US.

But one of the heads of the main Asian crime families being here.

You've dealt with these things, but there is one of your ministers had a very nice Chinese saying, when we open the windows, some flies may also.

Speaker 12

Enter, and sometimes we get more than flies.

Speaker 11

Yes, but how many flies can Singapore tolerate and do you need the biggest fly swatter.

Speaker 12

We do have quite a big fly swatter.

I mean it's we take it very seriously.

It's not unique to Singapore.

The elicit floors are everywhere.

It's all financial centers have to deal with this.

So to us, it's not so much about what you know that there is an incident that's bound.

They're bound to be incidents, and they are bound to be suspicious transactions, and then with intelligence, with cooperation across different countries, eventually we get to the bottom of it.

The key is what do you do?

And we are very stringent and we take swift action and we will.

We are determined to protect our reputation because that's what keeps Singapore going a trusted business and financial center.

Speaker 4

That with Singapore's Prime Minister Lawrence Wong speaking with John Micklethwaite, Editor and chief of Bloomberg News during the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore.

I'm Dereg Krisner.

You can catch us weekdays for the daybreak as your podcast.

It's available wherever you get your podcast.

Speaker 2

Nathan, Thanks Doug Man.

That does it for this edition of Bloomberg daybreak weekend, Join us again Monday morning at five am Wall Street Time for the latest don markets, overseas, and the news you need to start your day.

I'm Nathan Hager.

Stay with us stop stories and global business headlines are coming up right now

Never lose your place, on any device

Create a free account to sync, back up, and get personal recommendations.