US Delays New Iran Attack, AI Banking Job Cuts, Milan’s Wealth Boom | Bloomberg Daybreak: Europe...
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Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts radio
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This is the Bloomberg Daybure podcast.
Good morning. It's Tuesday the 19th of
May. I'm Caroline Hka in London.
President Trump says he is holding off
on planned strikes against Iran, but
markets remain concerned. Standard
Chartered CEO announces plans to
eliminate thousands of jobs in favor of
AI in a bid to replace what he calls
lower value human capital. Plus, why
Milan's wealth boom means even lawyers
are commuting from more affordable
turin. Let's start with a roundup of our
top stories. President Trump says that
he has called off planned strikes
against Iran after an appeal from
leaders of Persian Gulf allies. Speaking
from the White House, President Trump
told reporters why he chose to pull
back.
>> I was asked by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE,
and some others if we could put it off
for two or three days, a short period of
time because they think that they are
getting very close to making a deal.
>> The president has repeatedly threatened
renewed military action against Iran
without following through. And market
moves suggest that traders are becoming
increasingly unmoved by the president's
rhetoric on the Middle East. Stocks are
headed for a third day of declines as a
lack of tangible progress in resolving
the US Iran standoff keeps inflation
concerns front and center with oil
prices and bond yields remaining
elevated. Bloomberg senior Washington
editor Wendy Benjaminson says Trump's
latest comments underline the bind he
now finds himself in. It is another
example of Trump threatening
civilizational destruction and or even
just air strikes and then backing off
for one reason or another. And you know,
we think that the sort of ongoing effect
of this is that it's giving Iran
confidence that they can just wait this
out, that they can just keep throwing up
proposals that they know the US isn't
going to accept.
>> Wendy Benjaminson speaking there,
President Trump also warned that the US
is prepared to attack if an acceptable
deal isn't reached. However, he did not
set a deadline for securing a deal.
Standard Chartered has announced plans
to cut more than 15% of its support
staff by 2030 with those roles to be
replaced by AI. In a blunt message, CEO
Bill Winters said, "It's not cost
cutting. It's replacing in some cases
lower value human capital with the
financial capital and investment capital
we're putting in." The lender
headquartered in London says the roughly
8,000 job cuts will drive productivity
and help to raise income per employee by
about 20% over the next two years. The
move align standard charted with global
peers seeking tech efficiency. HSBC is
mulling deep job cuts over the coming
years while Wall Street firms are
similarly pivoting. Now shares in Sander
Charted in Hong Kong rose by more than
4% after the announcement.
A federal court in California has
dismissed claims filed against Open AI
and its top executives by Elon Musk.
Musk accused Open AI CEO Sam Alman of
betraying the firm's mission to benefit
the public by switching it into a
forprofit business. The jury found that
Musk though waited too long to file his
lawsuit despite having enough knowledge
about his claims years ago. Bloomberg
Intelligence's senior litigation analyst
Matthew Shettenhelm says the result is
significant for the chat GPT maker.
This lawsuit potentially threatened to
hang over the company's head. Elon Musk
was seeking court issued limitations on
the company's ability to pursue its
for-profit mission and really to be
limited and hamstrung by its original
charitable roots. So this win for the
company reduces that risk.
>> Bloomberg intelligence analyst Matthew
Shatenhelm there. The jury's conclusion
did not address Musk's central claim
that Open AI abandoned its
responsibilities to develop AI for the
benefit of humanity. Musk and his
lawyers have vowed an appeal against the
verdict, but didn't get into specifics
about what they will argue. European
Union officials are to meet today in an
effort to finalize legislation for the
block's trade deal with the United
States. Blueberg's Yuan Pods has the
details.
>> President Trump's July 4th deadline for
the EU to ratify its US trade deal is
now less than 7 weeks away. EU officials
meet today mindful of an earlier threat
from Trump to hike tariffs on European
car imports to 25%.
He's unhappy the EU hasn't moved quickly
enough to implement the deal signed
nearly a year ago now. A final version
must be agreed by parliament, the
commission, and the council and then
voted on. In London, I'm Yan Pots,
Bloomberg Radio. Greenland's leader has
warned that President Trump's ambition
to acquire the territory remains
unchanged. That's despite what he
described as a constructive meeting with
the US special envoy. Prime Minister
Yenszri Nielsen said yesterday's talks
had been conducted in a quote respectful
manner. The meeting was also attended by
Greenland's foreign minister and the US
ambassador to Denmark. Neielson told
reporters that he used the gathering to
reiterate that Greenlandic people are
not for sale. Now to the UK. the
favorite to replace Prime Minister Kier
Stalmer has indicated that he would keep
the current government's fiscal rules in
place, but he wants to reverse
austerity. Andy Burnham says that
Britain needs a serious rewiring.
>> A vote for me will be a vote to change
Labor to make life more affordable
again. This is the choice in this
bi-election. I know why I'm standing. I
know what I'm offering. I know what my
party has offered in the past has simply
not been good enough.
Andy Bernan speaking there. His
spokesperson told Bloomberg that the
mayor would not change Chancellor Rachel
Reeves' strict limits on government
borrowing. Labour is sounding out
alternatives to Karma after a fifth of
the party's lawmakers called on him to
resign. But the search for a new
direction has pushed British bond yields
higher as investors anticipate fresh
spending promises.
And lastly, the UK government is
consulting on a change to ring fencing
rules for banks. Rather than separating
retail and trading banking totally, the
new plans would give banks an allowance
to move between the two. Bake's James
Walk has more.
>> It was a response to the 2008 financial
crisis. Ring fencing was designed to
separate retail savings from riskier
trading desks. But now the UK government
wants to bring risk back, at least in a
limited way. They claim the plans, which
are under consultation, would unlock 80
billion pounds of funding for UK firms.
But shares of the lenders were little
changed on the news yesterday given
their two trillion pound combined loan
book in London. James Walco, Bloomberg
Radio.
>> And those are our top stories. Now in
the markets, Asian stocks dipping. The
Msei Asia-Pacific index down by 7/10en
of 1%. Fading optimism about an Iran
deal continues to hit markets. All
country world index down a tenth of 1%.
Stock futures for the United States in
the red. NASDAQ futures dropping half of
1%. Although for the US stocks 50
futures still in the green up almost 210
of 1%. The dollar strengthening the yen
hovering around 159. 10ear Treasury
yield adding a basis point at 4.6. 6%
JGB futures extending losses there.
Brank food futures down 2.1%
this morning at $1977
the barrel. Those are the markets. Now,
in a moment, we'll bring you the latest
on the economic impact of events in the
Middle East. Plus, we'll discuss why
Milan is suddenly seeing a boom in
wealth and what it actually means for
the city. But another story has caught
my eye this morning. Are you set on a
summer of travel? Well, checklist
tourism is being made worse apparently
by social media and also by the travel
industry. This according to Bloomberg's
Jamie Smith. The behavior may be as old
as tourism itself. I know. And that
dates back well to the Grand Tour in the
1800s. But today this uh is comes with a
much more awareness of course about how
it impacts the environment. And Jamie
points to a few destinations where photo
op tourism is really damaging the place
itself like the Greek island of
Santorini, parts of Turkey, but also
writes about the efforts to actually
help tourists to engage more deeply.
Efforts in Egypt, for example, bringing
in electric buses or a museum in
Florence that houses Michelangelo's
David to try to get museum goes to sort
of linger post that selfie. It does come
with the catch though. Prices for
visitors in those uh tourist
destinations are going up. But I think
it's really interesting that there are
big efforts to try to help people engage
with place, with art, with culture.
Anyway, it's a lovely story and I'm
going to put a link to it in our podcast
show notes for you to read. Now, the
crisis in Iran hovers between escalation
and some form of resolution as President
Trump held off on an attack against Iran
after Persian Gulf leaders appealed for
more time to reach a diplomatic deal.
Joining us now is Zad Bloomberg
economics is chief emerging markets
economist. Good morning, Siad. The US
president is clearly in a very difficult
position. He's created a bind. How much
would further military action increase
oil prices? How big a shock would
further military intervention be?
>> Good morning, Caroline. Um, well, the
war has already sent oil from $65 per
barrel to about $110 per barrel. That s
seems about fine where the market is. A
resumption of war by itself uh would not
necessarily lead to higher oil prices
unless it causes further disruption in
the oil market. And the biggest
disruption and the biggest risk is the
East West pipeline in Saudi Arabia and
the Britzy port of Yamba. That's the
biggest diversion that we've had away
from the straight of Hormuz that's
supplying the world with about 5 million
barrels of oil per day. That's roughly
5% of global supplies and that is the
biggest risk for oil markets. For them
to go higher, you need further
disruption and that is the biggest risk
to disruption. Well, you've also been
writing about how uh and whether the oil
market can then absorb the shock of the
war. How much demand destruction is
happening or may continue to happen do
you think?
>> Sure. If you take take a step back, the
war has basically deprived the global
economy of about 10 to 12 million
barrels of oil per day. Now, for the
world, it cannot consume more than it
produces. So how did we offset how does
the glo how did the global economy
offset this loss of supplies? I think it
did three things. 40% of the offset came
from the fact that the world has been
drawing down on its inventories. 30% of
that offset was coming from demand
destruction, people consuming less oil
and the other 30% was the fact that the
world was going to end up with a massive
surplus of oil. Instead surplus never
materialized. Um, so in terms of demand
destruction, we think it's about 30% of
that 10 to 12 million barrels of oil
that we lost. Some of it came in the
form of less energy consumption. Some of
it came in the form of consuming energy
but non- oil energy. So it could be
either dirty energy sources like coal or
clean ones like renewables.
>> Okay. So that's what happens in terms of
the response globally. As for the
closure of the straight of hormones,
Bloomberg is also looking at this
growing supply chain pressure and what
it means for inflation.
>> Yes. So basically the war did two
things. Uh it had a massive shortage of
oil which led to a surge in oil prices
and that translated into higher
inflation almost immediately and that's
what everyone has been focused on. But
it's also a slow slowmoving process in
the sense that it's disrupting supply
chains through shipping through critical
material through drawing down on
inventories and my colleagues Rana Saged
and Anagalva have looked at the impact
of this. Basically we do have supply
chain shortages their impact on
inflation is not materializing now. It
takes time for that to materialize into
final product inflation. That'll
probably take about 12 to 18 months and
that will add to uh basically the global
inflation surge. It won't be as big as
oil. It won't be as fast as oil but it
is significant and it would enter into
into the thinking of central banks
around the world.
>> Yeah. And that's going to be key isn't
it? Thank you so much for being with me.
Ad is Bloomberg economics is chief
emerging markets economist just talking
about well what could be quite a long
impact in terms of the crisis in Iran.
Stay with us more from Bloomberg day
coming up after this. Now Milan was once
a second tier financial center but
there's been an influx of wealth that
has sent rents and living costs soaring
and really transformed the city. Joining
us now is senior editor Anthony Palazzo
from Rome to talk about this story.
Anthony, good to speak to you. Milan's
been reinventing itself probably for a
decade. Recently, the economy has really
been booming, but the city is also
feeling quite a lot of growing pains
from this. How?
>> Yes, that's right, Caroline, and thank
you for having me. Uh the city has
really been the biggest beneficiary of
Italy's incentives to attract wealthy
residents from places like R London and
draw expats into returning. Um and it,
as we say in the piece, this has also
produced a knock-on effect of higher
costs for homes and really everything
else. And it's the most expensive city
in Italy. So we we what we found was
that a number a growing number of
professionals like corporate lawyers,
people in the financial industry even
have been choosing to live in Trin
instead, which is cheaper and less than
an hour away by train.
>> Wow. So more people then opting to
commute into Milan. What's that like?
>> Well, it's not for everyone certainly.
Uh but there are definite benefits for
those who can make it work. For one
thing, if you want to purchase a home in
central Milan, for example, it's €1.8
million on average. In downtown Tin,
it's about onethird of that cost. U and
also things like private schools are
less expensive, the pace of life is
quieter, and uh these are things that
are attractive for for families. Um,
what we found a lot of the people that
we spoke with were millennials who are
through that that grueling early part of
their career. They have more flexible
schedules. They don't have to be in the
office every day. Um, and some have uh
family in the area who can provide a
backs stop for emergencies. So, those
are the people that that this is really
an attractive option for those people.
>> Yeah, it was a really interesting story
to read. There's even a name, isn't
there, for the commute between Turin and
Milan, which I will not attempt in
Italian. Mito mi t, right? That's the
spelling of it.
>> That's right.
>> Yeah, I like it. It's a lovely story,
Anthony. Thank you so much. At least, I
think a really interesting one. Milan,
much smaller than London, Paris, New
York, of course. Uh, but you know, all
of the pressures as it wants to grow.
This is Bloomberg Daybreak Europe, your
morning brief on the stories making news
from London to Wall Street and beyond.
>> Look for us on your podcast feed every
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I'm Caroline Hepka
>> and I'm Steven Carroll. Join us again
tomorrow morning for all the news you
need to start your day right here on
Bloomberg Daybreak Europe.
Ask follow-up questions or revisit key timestamps.
This episode of the Bloomberg Daybreak Europe podcast covers major global headlines, including President Trump's stance on military action in Iran, Standard Chartered's plan to replace thousands of jobs with AI, and a federal court's dismissal of Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI. The discussion also highlights the economic impacts of the Iran crisis on global oil markets and inflation, as well as the gentrification of Milan, which is forcing professionals to commute from more affordable cities like Turin.
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