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I've spent the last three decades trying to better understand money across the boardroom, the newsroom and the trading floor.
That's longer than most podcast hosts have been alive.
But even I've got questions.
Join me, Meryn Subset-Webb, every week for my show Meryn Talks Money from Bloomberg Podcasts, where I have in-depth conversations with fund managers, strategists and experts about how markets really work.
And join me for a separate episode where I answer listener questions on how to make those markets work for you.
Follow Meron Talks Money on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
Also today concerns from Indian farmers about its interim trade agreement with the United States and why there are more incentives for businesses to damage nature than to protect it.
First, there's stocks in Japan surging after Sanae Takeuchi's resounding election win.
Her Liberal Democratic Party won more than two-thirds of the seats in the lower parliament in Japan its best ever result.
And that gives Ms Takeuchi greater ability to enact her agenda, which is expected to include increasing government spending to boost economic growth and cutting taxes for consumers.
What are people in Japan saying about the cost of living there?
Our sun is getting bigger and we need a bigger place, but it's really not affordable for us.
With President Trump back in office, there are many challenges.
National defense is one, but if we spend money on that, how does it help people's livelihoods?
Japan's Nikkei index went past 57,000 points for the first time ever after the election result.
Leo Lewis is the Tokyo bureau chief at the Financial Times.
The Nikkei futures had already started to rise in Sunday.
And then when the market opened up, it shot to record highs on the Nikkei.
And the Topix index, which is broader, was also reaching a record within a few minutes of trading starting.
So investors are obviously reassured.
Are they reassured by the stability of the same party remaining in office or by the actual policies that Sonny Takeuchi is promising?
It's a bit of both, but I'd say the main thing is the stability.
The investors I spoke to this morning said look, if you look around the world at various democracies, Japan has got now one of the most solid governments amongst those democracies.
It's the opposite of unstable.
Takahichi.
The prime minister has now given herself several years really, until 2028, the next election in the upper house.
She's got a few years now with this enormous majority.
And in terms of what she might do.
She's basically pledging to increase spending to do things to boost growth in Japan, but also cut taxes.
She's been surprisingly critical of her own government's history of investing domestically, and specifically in investing in what she thinks of as important growth sectors.
So tech, AI and a few other industries. areas where she thinks that Japan has an industrial edge.
She's been critical, as I say, of a party that has itself been in power for most of the last 70 years and is now coming and saying look, we need to change all that.
What we need to do is to focus on domestic investment and longer term thinking about where we direct that public spending.
And Leo Lewis of the Financial Times with me from Tokyo, next to India, where the government has defended its trade deal with the United States after some farmers criticised it for giving too many concessions.
So is India giving more than it's getting here?
Archana Shukla is our India business correspondent in Mumbai.
The most important part from India's perspective is the tariffs coming down from the highs of 50 to 18.
So the penalty tariffs of 25%, which were against India buying Russian oil, that has been removed.
The deal also opens a large part of Indian market to the US products.
India has committed to reduce tariffs to zero on a host of American industrial products that come into India, including aerospace products.
But really the element that is raising a lot of concerns is India opening up the agriculture market for a lot of American products, including soybean oil, which is something that most farmers have been talking about and concerned too.
So opening up the market to the US sort of sounds good, but of course it's not good for farmers and other people in India.
Yes, and that really has been some of the concerns.
We know for a fact that, for the last several months, when these negotiations had dragged on, agriculture was one of the biggest red lines.
Indian government and India had been very non-committal on opening up, refusing to open up the agriculture market, especially for genetically modified crops from the United States, considering that will put a large section of domestic farmers, especially small-hold farmers, at a disadvantage.
Also, tree nuts, fresh and processed fruits, distillers, dried grains.
These are some of the products for which India is opening up its market to the US products.
And farmers are really concerned that this would hurt the domestic manufacturers.
You said it's difficult getting comment from the Indian side about all this.
What have they said today?
The trade ministry has been very clear.
Trade Minister Piyush Goel has said that India has not offered any concessions on dairy or genetically modified crops and that the deal will safeguard farmers.
That's our India business correspondent, Arkana Shukla, with me from Mumbai.
Two takeover stories for you on World Business Express.
A consortium led by the delivery firm FedEx has agreed to buy the Polish parcel locker company InPost for 925 billion.
Its lockers are used for delivery and returns by major online retailers.
And one of Britain's last family-run make-up brands has been bought out of administration by the cosmetics rival Warpaint.
Barry M was set up in 1982, inspired by the punk era.
Live to Rachel Winter now, partner and investment manager at Killik & Co.
Rachel, thanks for being with us.
Let's talk about Novo Nordisk, the pharmaceutical giant.
They're suing an online health provider hims and hers for trying to sell cheaper versions of its drugs.
Yeah.
So HIMSS thought it had found a way to produce and market a cheaper version of Novo's main weight loss drug.
The regulator has disagreed with HIMSS and said it's not allowed to do that.
Novo has said it will be suing HIMSS.
HIMSS has now said it will be withdrawing its product from the market.
That's great news for Novo.
Novo shares are up 5% at the moment and shares in HIMSS are down 27%.
And let's talk about some political turmoil in the UK today.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has lost a couple of key aides in the last 24 hours.
In the last hour or so, the leader of Labour in Scotland is calling for him to stand down.
Is there any market reaction to all this?
There is a reaction, but it's not a big one at the moment.
We are seeing a little bit of weakness in the pound against the euro.
We've seen a bit of weakness in UK government bonds, but UK equities are up at the moment as we are seeing a positive afternoon for the UK's FTSE 250 index.
So not a dramatic reaction from the market so far.
Rachel, thank you.
Now business is harming the environment, with over 7 trillion of activity harming nature, while 200 billion is spent protecting it.
This is a new report from the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, which says it's a risk to business in the long term.
Here's Eva Zabe from the organisation Business for Nature.
Right now, we estimate that 26 trillion each year are flowing towards activities that are unintentionally harmful for the environment.
What kind of things?
Typically subsidies.
It can be in different forms.
It can be tax cuts.
Or, if you think of the most obvious one, it would be a fossil fuel subsidy or an agrichemical subsidy, subsidy which is in place for the right reasons, with socioeconomic benefits for people, so that it's affordable for people to live.
But the unintended consequence is that then there are significant environmental damage, and that hasn't been taken into account in the economic estimates.
Give me an example of the kind of measure you'd like to see in terms of regulation or business activity.
That would be taking us in a better direction.
First of all, I think in the whole food systems there's so many incentives that need to be put in place to encourage more natural farming.
If you think of things like when people talk about water filtration man-made water filtration plants well, actually natural wetlands can do the job for you in a much more cost-effective way.
And if there were incentives to encourage companies, for example, to do treat and filter their wastewater using natural systems, that could then also encourage the protection, restoration and sustainable use of these foundations that we all rely on.
That's Eva Zabi, who's the Chief Executive of Business for Nature, on that new report about business being incentivised to harm the environment.
That's it for today.
More online at bbccom slash news and do subscribe to World Business Express to get the latest edition.
From me, Andrew Peach and the team, thank you for being with us.
I've spent the last three decades trying to better understand money across the boardroom, the newsroom and the trading floor.
That's longer than most podcast hosts have been alive.
But even I've got questions.
Join me, Maren Subset-Webb, every week for my show Maren Talks Money from Bloomberg Podcasts, where I have in-depth conversations with fund managers, strategists and experts about how markets really work.
And join me for a separate episode where I answer listener questions on how to make those markets work for you.
Follow Marin Talks Money on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
