to the nomination and the election and to deserve. i spent 53 years trying to understand what you need to do and how to explain it to the american people and how you implement it. everything i have done has been a preparation for this. thank you very much. best of luck. hello and welcome to "wbt," i'm andrew stevens in hong kong. and i'm nina dos santos in london. a bad situation just got worse. there are red faces in europe after a ratings downgrade but greece is the country that's the real epicenter of the debt crisis this week.

as search and rescue attempts continue, the focus moves 0en to who is to blame for the sinking of a giant ocean liner off the italian coast. and we'll tell you which production houses is big at the golden globes and what these awards tell us about the upcoming oscar ceremonies. first up, though, if the new year promised a new europe, well, some people could be disappointed. standard & poors last week had other ideas completely. to nobody's great surprise, this particular influential company decided to downgrade the credit scores of nine countries across the euro zone on friday. these particular downgrades apply to a large swath of central and southern europe. it is this country in the center here, france, that is commanding

all the headlines today. this after france lost its treasured aaa rating. that in turn, some economists say could undermine the a aa rating of the total esfs. one country as well that's hitting the headlines, one country that will ill afford any more bailout troubles is here on the southern and eastern fringes of europe. it is, of course, greece, andrew. nina, downgrading italy and spain won't inspire confidence in a year when euro zone governments need to refinance more than a trillion dollars worth of debt but the situation is more urgent in athens where talks on a deal to write down the value of greek bonds have stalled in a dispute over the interest rate on those bonds. that raises the likelihood of a greek default and subsequent exit from a greek zone.

persuading cash-strapped banks to accept what would effectively be a bigger writedown based on lower interest or coupon as it's known is not proving easy. debt repayment in march but if not agreement in the next few days could miss that end default. andrew, let's have a look at how the european markets are reacting. they've had about an hour or so to react to this. do bear in mind we already got news before that official standard & poors statement two hours before trading on market. these markets had a chance to lose stream when the reports came out while trading was under way on friday. the word on the street seems to be caution rather than all-out fear. we have tepid gains at the moment, some of markets up to the tune of 0.5%, like, for instance, the xetra dax doing

slightly better than you'd expect than the cac 40. germany wasn't included in the downgrades. must also point out, one thing that will be widely watched is grease but france has a bond auction going on today. given the fact that this country has lost its aaa crown, that will be one country to watch. >> nina, a negative picture across the board here in asia-pacific. take a look at these. these are losses of today, not surprising after that downgrid. this is not big falls. if you sort of compare that with what we've been seeing over the past 18 months or so, the volatility that's been going on. not a huge reaction there, because a lot of it had been baked into the prices anyway. leading the fall today, financial stocks are worsely affected. transportation companies and exporters taking a knock as debt fears deepened. airlines were down, china southern down by 8%, air china down by 5.5%.

they're triaded here in hong kong. shanghai composite off 1.6%. the u.s. stock markets are closed on monday for a national holiday. we can expect plenty of corporate earnings in the days ahead when trading resumes on tuesday. nina? >> let's go back to the topic at hand, get insight and analysis on this. standard & poors was arguably, some say, delaying the inevitable by saving this particular downgrade for euro zone countries until the new year. 2012 has a familiar plafr to it, doesn't it? because we knew on december 5th they had earmarked a number of these countries for a downgrade. it was not an all-out surprise. it was a question of when, not if. michael joins us from london. >> good morning.

>> good morning. this news more or less came out friday afternoon. many people are saying it was priced to the equation, wasn't it? >> absolutely. if you look at french ten-year bond yields they're trading around the 3% level. this isn't really anything new. the concern was, i think, the focus should be on italy's rating. they were downgraded to triple b plus. >> so some of these countries could be coming down more than 1 or 2 notches. then we should also mention the implications for france in particular could be quite severe because of the bailout fund. raising money for that so-called efsf. >> that's very key. i think that's really going to shift the focus more towards germany. essentially what this downgrade has done, it's made the esfs because of the way it's structured it, a lot smaller.

s&p at the weak end suggested germany might have to up its contribution to keep the current levels -- at their current levels if you like. i think the political pressure on germany will ratchet up to step up to the plate, given the fact there's a lot more pressure on france's rating now. >> then again, the greek situation has come back to the forefront. it seems the talks with creditors could collapse. do you think they will and what will be the ramifications of that? >> i think it's inevitable at some point greece will default. the haircuts being imposed on the creditors totally excludes the ecb. the ecb doesn't have referred credit to status. so i think this story with respect to the greek haircuts, still has quite a lot of room to run and run. >> okay. michael hewson joining us from c & c markets.

thanks for coming on "world business today." andrew? >> thanks, nina. as the euro zone debt crisis continues to unfold, the single currency is trading close to an 11-year low against the japanese. take a look at the patent off trading we've seen over the past decade or so. the yen, steadily strengthening in recent years and further harming japanese exporters. the europe single currency is down 43% against the yen. now standing at 97.29 to the euro. elsewhere, the euro has strengthened slightly against the dollar. it's still close to a 17-month low. take a look at the numbers there. euro against the dollar. 1.5310. we have more debt crisis coverage still ahead. at half past the hour we're live in paris to see how france is reacting to that s&p downgrade, ahead of a crucial test on the bond market.

stay with us for that. nina? >> andrew, but first, the death toll from the cruise ship disaster has risen to six. at present over a dozen passengers still remain missing. what happened and why is now the subject of a criminal investigation. in just over an hour from now we'll be hearing from the cruise ship company, costa cruises. the italian coast guard says the concordia was 4 kilometers offcourse when it struck rocks off of the island of giglio. there are some reports at that point of power outages and that the vessel was taking on water. it's thought that the captain decided that he would turn the ship around and head closer to land. by about 10:45 p.m., passengers began abandoning the listing

ship. >> the ship's captain may have committed, quote, significant human error leading to the emergency. one theory about why the ship was sailing so close to the shoreline it was doing a fly-by so that passengers could wave to people on the shore. cnn asked maritime expert kim peterson of the maritime security council whether he's heard thatful fly-byes might be common practice? >> no, i haven't. i don't believe a captain or the deputy captain or staff captain in this case would be doing a sail-by so that people can wave to folks on shore. they may bring the vessel closer to see the lights of a city or what have you. i know of one ship that would occasionally divert to see volcanic activity you might see in certain parts of the mediterranean. we're getting reports back now that have yet to be substantiated that this ship was

actually on the wrong side, that it was supposed to have been transiting on the east side of the island in fact was on the west side of the island where the waters are considerably shallower. this is all something the investigation is going to determine. this is an area that's very well charted. there shouldn't be surprises of this sort. there are vessels transiting this area all the time. obviously something went wrong and that was almost certainly within the bridge of that ship. >> we'll have more on the captain in just a moment's time. first, a south korean couple's honeymoon ended in a 30-hour nightmare. they're among the last passengers to be brought out alive off the ship. they talk to cnn about their ordeal. >> translator: we ran out to the corridor and looked for an emergency exit. we ran towards the exit but the body of the ship was on such a slope and it looked like we'd fall through a huge crack if we

proceeded that way. we went back and forth on the side we were at. we were rescued in that corridor. as we were going back and forth in the corridor, blowing a whistle for help and shouting out, the rescuer workers found us. >> absolutely terrifying. there are many questions about how the ship ended up on the rocks. the captain has been held for questioning along with the first officer. he could face charges of manslaughter and abandoning ship. he refutes those charges and says the rocks were not on his charts. >> translator: what happened while we were moving with the tourist navigation system, there was a lateral rock projection. even though we were sailing along the coast with the choice navigation system, i believe the rocks with are not detected as the ship was not heading forward but sideways as if under water there was a rock projection. i don't know if it was detected or not. on the nautical chart it was

marked as water 150 to 150 meters from the rocks. we were 300 meters from the shore, more or less. we shouldn't have had this contact. >> we'll be hearing from the costa cruise company at a scheduled press conference. 8:00 a.m. eastern standard time in the u.s. 9:00 p.m. if you're watching here in hong kong. you're looking there at live pictures of the sunken ship. we'll bring you that press conference live as it happens. we will indeed. still to come on "world business today," refusing to back down s a international pressure mounts for iran. i'm good about washing my face. but sometimes i wonder... what's left behind?

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pressure is mounting on iran. the u.s. and uk already imposed strict sanctions on all transactions with iran over

concerns about the country's nuclear weapons program. but now, britain's foreign secretary, william hague, says he's confident that the european union entirely will follow suit. that in turn would be another blow for tehran. eu countries accounted for a fifth of iran's total oil exports last year, equivalent to china. iran is pushing back after earlier threats to block the strait of hormuz. iran issued a new warning to its fellow opec nations. its told them any effort to increase oil production will be seens aunfriendly towards tehran. investors are watching this closely to see what it means for the price of crude. as expected, the tensions that we have been seeing in the gulf over the supply of oil there have sent price of light sweet crude bubbling higher. it's been trending higher for the past few months.

and if you look at where it is at the moment, currently just a shade under $99 a barrel. that's in electronic trading, nina. >> andrew, saudi arabia's oil minister is trying to downplay potential supply concerns. he says that saudi arabia, the world's biggest exporter, is ready and willing to increase output to meet customer demand. speaking exclusively to cnn he said that his country's extra oil reserves are big enough to boost oil exports by nearly 2 million barrels a day almost immediately. >> i believe we can easily get up to 11.4, 11.8, almost immediately, in a few days. because all we need is turn valves. now, to get to the next 700 or so be we probably need about 90 days. >> there's this concern that iran's exports at 2.2 million barrels a day could not be

filled. the reality is that the kingdom can fill those exports almost straight away, sir? >> this capacity is to respond to emergencies worldwide, to respond to our customer demand. and that is really the focus, our focus is not on who drops out from production but who wants more. >> contacts and the global ramifications, let's go live to john. he joins us from cnn abu dhabi. blunt comments from the saudi oil minister. what else was he saying? >> well, it's quite interesting. it's an extraordinary declaration if you think about it, andrew. we know saudi arabia has been building up spare capacity but were not aware that it could go to 12.5 million barrels a day between now and 09 days. he's basically saying i could turn valves on and get extra.

he was referring to $100 a barrel for a basket of crude nymex, north sea brent and the opec crude right now. he said this is not pointed towards iran or those who drop out of of the market. this is important for us to meet the needs of our customers around the world and send a message to the world if iran stops exporting because of sanctions that it can replace that supply almost immediately. i know there's a debate about the quality of the crude, the heavy crude versus the light sweet crude. the minister did want to say something clearly right now, that saudi arabia is prepared to act to protect supplies, especially coming through the straits of hormuz and that there are no shortage of oil for the market. it's served as a swing producer in the past and it's prepared to do so again. >> you mention the straits of hormuz. obviously is a key concern for

investors as well. could they glove the strait of hormuz? >> first and foremost i asked the minister how much of your oil goes through the strait of hormuz. half goes through. he says we have alternatives, that means taking oil through pipelines across the country to the red sea and distributing there. he did say, quote, unquote, i personally do not believe the strait, if it were shut will be shut for any length of time. basically, this is a quote again, the world cannot stand for that. this is not a message only from saudi arabia but obviously coordination taking place that they do want to protect the waterways of the straits of hormuz and it sounds like this is a coordinated effort between the gulf cooperation council states, particularly saudi arabia and those in the west who suggest sanctions going forward. i had an interview with the u.n.

secretary general today. that they have to abide by international laws and the straits of hormuz cannot be shut off, to transport particularly oil. >> you can hear more from join on "global exchange," 5:00 in central europe. coming up next on "world business today," the power of protest wins out in nigeria. the government slashes fuel prices. will it be enough to get workers back to their jobs? we go live after the break.

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check your steps at foodsafety.gov. the nigerian government slashed fuel prices after nationwide protests that paralyzed the country last week. president goodluck jonathan made the announcement on monday and ordered civil servants back to work. the policy u-turn comes after the government tried to remove a subsidy on fuel to overhaul the country's ram shackle infrastructure. we are joined live. nema, give us the latest. >> reporter: it's a pretty big climbdown to come down from complete deregulation. it's still far off the 65, about

40 cents the unions say they need to go back to that negotiating table. jonathan did show that he understands for many nigerians, this is about much more than just the price of fuel. this is about transparency, it's about corruption and government accountability. in that same speech he also announced his government would be taking measures to tackle corruption. this is what he said. >> this is irrevocably committed to tackling corruption, across the sectors of the economy. this will be done one way or the other, the economic adversities of the country will be held in accordance with law. >> reporter: every day of this strike, nina, the nigerian economy loses just under a billion dollars. you can understand why with that

came a pretty big stick. we're seeing a huge distribution of soldiers, heavy police presence. many rallying and protest points that were occupied by protesters. union bosses say they're not going to back down, nina. >> as you were saying it's extremely detrimental to the nigerian economy. the irony about all of this, mnima, this money that was supposed to be raised from lifting the fuel subsidies was supposed to be invested in the country. it's beginning to cost an awful lot to fix this situation when eventually the unions and government does back down. >> reporter: at the moment it really seems to be a situation where the unions are saying we are always having these conversations. wait for now, we're working on the infrastructure and the economy. we don't want nigeria to lose its position as the powerhouse economy in west africa. nigerians were saying we were told this was the most transparent and democratic election, yet we're still seeing

the same problems we've seen with previous administrations. if not now, then when? just to really get a context of this, because of the power issues for nigerians this isn't just about what they put in their cars, what they drive to go into work, how much they'll pay for transport or public transportation. people have to fill up generators to power their homes and businesses. this fights in every sing way in their daily lives. for now it looks like they're ready for the fight. >> many thanks for the update there. andrew, as we all know, nigeria is africa's largest oil producing nation. it's also set to eclipse south africa's economy as the biggest on the couldn't nen the by 2015. with this situation, perhaps it will be difficult getting there. >> absolutely. it does throw focus on to what a lot of people talk about in business, the level of corruption, dealing with it, nina. at least a spotlight is being

shown on it. still to come on "world business today," friday 13th brought its fair share of horror for the euro zone, certainly. and fear is once again stalking investors after standard & poors slashed a slew of sovereign credit ratings. look at how european leaders are now trying to pick up the pieces. that's next.

live from cnn london and hong kong, welcome back. you're watching "world business today." president sarkozy saw it coming but friday's s&p downgrade of french debt will still surely have hurt.

the last of the prize aaa rating crown may prove to be testing for france and its government. as mr. sarkozy meets the spanish prime minister to discuss the ongoing crisis, well, he's keen to show that he still belongs to the euro zone's top tier. let's get more on that crucial meeting from jim bitterman joining us live from paris. jim, first up, let's talk about france losing its aaa crown. that's surely going to have hurt. france already had a tense relationship with the ratings agencies months before. >> reporter: absolutely, nina. they've been talking about this for the last six weeks here at least. this morning, the downgrade has brought the newspaper headline together. everyone says the shock wave talking about the loss of aaa and figaro says the crisis of the euro is reshuffling the cards. one of the decks of cards that's being reshuffled is the presidential race here. we're less than 100 days from

the first round of the election and president sarkozy has been dealt a real blow by this. he staked a lot of his reputation on maintaining that aaa. justified a lot of the economic reforms on the basis of the fact that france needed to keep its aaa rating. now that it's lost that, the opposition has a field day, the socialist candidate for president says that it's not that france has been downgraded, it's president sarkozy who has been downgraded by this. nina? >> jim, the timing really couldn't be worse. france is planning to go to the markets today with an $11 billion bond auction. it's now perhaps finding itself in a similar situation to the situation that countries like italy and spain have found themselves in over the course of the last year or so. will that color the discussions between the leaders of france and spain? >> without a doubt. i think they're all sort of worried about this now, nine different countries have been

downgraded by standard & poors. they're all kind of in the same boat. it does point to systemic problems almost across the euro zone. the only exception, of course, are germany and holland who have maintained their aaa ratings and as a consequence, i think all of these leaders are trying to figure out what they can do to improve their reputations and improve their economies in a way that will satisfy the agencies. as you say, france is going to the markets not only for the loans this morning but has down the line something like a quarter trillion euro's worth of loans this year they're expecting to make to support its public spending. as a consequence, those loans will be more expensive because of the credit downgrade. nina? >> they certainly will. another thing, jim, we should talk about is the so-called esfs, the bailout funds. they'll be having to raise money for that. perhaps many people are saying it's not appetizing if one of the main protagonists like

france has just been downgraded. >> well, the esfs says, in fact, based on the guarantees made by these various governments and that these governments are being downgraded in the sovereign debt area because of the fact they have problems in the domestic economy, of course, that has a ripple on, a domino effect on the esfs. so as a consequence, all of the -- it's really kind of a house of cards that has to be maintained in the europeans want to keep the euro stable. what we're seeing here, i think is a lot of joint hand holding amongst the leaders if they want to figure out where they want to go to next. in the case of sarkozy he said there's going to be no more economic reforms here. even as he said that or has been saying that over the last few days, it was finance minister left the door open for more austerity measures when he talked to the press on friday night. that's something that will be

very unpopular with the french people here, especially in the electoral period. nina. >> jim bitterman joining us live from paris with the latest. many thanks for that. let's see what's going on in the european markets. we have an $11 billion bond sale going on in france today. given the fact that france is one of a number of euro zone countries that has lost its top notch credit rating on friday, thanks to s&p, well, the s&p downgrades sort of affecting the markets a little bit. a lot of people saying it was priced into the equation because since december 5th we've known that a lot of these countries were earmarked for a downgrade by that credit ratings agency anyhow. we also have greek debt talks being problematic. the cac 40 in france down by 0.25%, ftse down, but germany which was not cut in terms of its credit rating is still shining today. nina, here's another thing

to consider. i saw research from jp morgan. they looked at ten-year yields for nine sovereigns that have lost their aaa rating over the past ten years. they worked out on average that the downgrade meant the cost of borrowing rose by just 2 basis points in the following week after that downgrade. that is not a big jump in borrowing costs. interesting bit of research there. there are the numbers you see in asia. reacting to the downgrade, obviously asia was closed on friday when the news came through. as nina was saying, baked into the markets. these are the no big falls. given the general uncertainty and the fact that the euro zone is front and center, we don't know where we go from here, particularly now with greece into the mix. there may be a default, even pimco saying there will be a default. it's a liquid market. people using that to get out of the emerging markets. shanghai, down by 1.7%.

the financials are leadinging the way down across the board. the financials are most exposed within we come to this euro zone crisis anyway. that closing figure in shanghai represents the fourth straight day of losses on china's benchmark index. let's get more reaction around the region. we're joined live from cnn beijing. as i was saying, it's down. it could have been a lot worse, i guess. >> reporter: yes, especially when you think we have the gdp figures coming out here tomorrow as well. some expectation of that i think you touched 0en it, too, four straight days it's been down really into it, it seemed there was a bit of profit-taking there. that may have accounted to are it, not correctly related to what's happening in europe but of course, what's happening in europe has a big impact on china. it's not an economic island. we talk about the ongoing growth of china and it's emergence as an economic superpower but it needs partners to keep growing. we touched on this in the past,

andrew. it doesn't have the domestic con summing to be able to fuel its own growth within its own borders. where does it sell to? it sells to the united states and the eu. in fact, the eu is the biggest market for china. two-way trade between europe and china worth over $500 billion a year. so china needs to have a healthy year. at the same time, you know, this relationship has had its strains in the past. we've seen a lot of concern in europe as the reason the united states have got what they see as china officially keeping its currency low to get an export advantage. also concern that china is not opening up its markets enough to europe. talking to one analyst today, he was interested in saying he doesn't think europe is as hard line as the u.s. is. he said to me, he believes europe is more in awe of china's growth. we saw that when europe has come here in the past with the begging ball out, asking for

more money from china to be aible to bail it out from trouble. this relationship is a key one, an important one from china. it needs a strong europe to be able to find more sources for growth and ahead of those gdp figures it comes into even more focus. andrew? >> yes. have you been able to speak to people who actually are exporters to europe? and to find out what sort of impact this european slowdown, the uncertainty is having on real businesses in china? >> yes, of course, china, we touched on this in the past. that china relies on being able to sell into those markets. there has been a bit of a slowdown if you look at it month on month as far as exporting to europe or the united states goes. we can look ahead to tomorrow's gdp figures many are saying it will dip below 9% for the first time in a long while. this is probably part of it is

the problems within china but also, the drying up of markets in europe and the united states. i did have a chance to speak to one lady here today who imports wine from europe for the chinese market. really fascinating story. we can bring you this later, a bit more on her. she moved here about four years ago. she said to me, she felt she got out just in time. she came here with a suitcase full of wine samples and nothing else. she's since been able to build her business, she's now operating out of several countries across china, employs about 50 people. she's tapping into this burgeoning growth in the wean market. she says to me, no way is she going to go back home right now. andrew? >> can't blame her for that. not much to go back to. >> why would you. >> thanks so much for that. sounds interesting what stan was saying about that wine trader. there was an auction of sort of first growth of bordeauxes here

in hong kong this weekend and they didn't sell very well at all. this is unusual. obviously the chill is starting to hit the wine industry as well. china has been so strong in propping up wine prices around the world. >> that's an interesting statistic. after the break we'll be going from the world's most populous country to the world's second most populous country because the economy is booming there. but the economic opening continues as well. we'll be live in india's commercial capital for a look at the stock market there. this on the date when it opened its doors to foreign individual investors for the very first time. i was having trouble getting out of bed in the

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welcome back to the show. if india's main stock index is expecting a flood of foreign money. take a look henned me. it didn't seem to materialize. there hasn't been exactly a stampede on to this particular

market. take a look at the bombay index. that index based in mumbai is only up by 0.2% at the moment. in 0ing up the market for them, the government is hoping to reverse deep losses in the country's main stock index in mumbai and we saw that index having quite a tough year last year, not gaining in the double digits by what we had seen over the years before. ma we are joined live by skype by malika. people have been waiting to are this development for years. >> reporter: that's a very good question, you're right, people have been waiting to get into the indian stock market for years but you know that was when the stock market was booming. as you just pointed out, the indian stock market has had a

terrific runup over the last couple of years. if you look at what's happened, it's starting to look pretty grim. the indian stock market fell about 25% just last year. it lost about a quarter of its value in one year alone. it isn't the best time for people to be rushing to the indian stock market. you know, that's exactly why india has decided to open up its market to foreign investors right now. because india desperately needs the money right now. if you look at the situation just two years ago, we had so much foreign money coming into the indian market, at that time, of course, foreigners could only invest in stock market by institutional directors. you couldn't invest directly. last year, that fell to, get this, 380 million. that is a staggering fall. we've seen the other -- the impact it's had on the economy, the stock market has been

falling. inflation remains high. it's in a free fall. this is why the indian government has taken the decision to invest in the stock market for the first time now. >> malika, india has been trying to modernize and open up key parts of industry, not just the stock exchange but the retail market to foreign investors. is perhaps today's lackluster performance to due with this having to become a qualified investor before you can buy shares on the sensex. >> that's something that always comes up whenever india has to become a step forward. bureaucracy does come in the way. if we look at what happened in the retail sector, the indian government took a bold, forward-looking resolve.

we opened up the indian retail sector, the walmart and the others can come in. you know, this is also happening in the airline industry. as you know, the indian aviation sector is a lot of trouble right now. many of the airlines are on brink of bankruptcy. they're really struggling and the indian airlines have been clamoring for years saying, listen, open up the sector, let's have foreign investment into the airline sector. we're hearing it may happen, it may not happen. bureaucracy does often get in the way of reform in india. and we just have to wait and see what happens with this. they have made it quite strict for people to get the right approval, the right credentials to be able to invest in the stock market. india does desperately need that cash. and hopefully people will find a way. but before that, a lot of people are saying, yes, it's great. we're allowing people to invest in the indian stock market but we have to get our own house in

order first. what good is a stock market which is on such a downward trend. who will want to invest in the indian stock market right now? >> all right, many thanks for that. nina, still ahead on "world business today," a big night in hollywood. we've got the highlights from this year's golden globes awards, the winners, the losers, the blockbuster moneymakers. it's all right here on "world business today." um-- well, you know, you're in luck. we're experts in this sort of thing, mortgage rigamarole, whatnot. r-really? absolutely, and we guarantee results, you know, for a small fee, of course. such are the benefits of having a professional on your side. [whistles, chuckles] why don't we get a contract? who wants a contract? [honks horn] [circus music plays]

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as the academy awards naughty little brother and the golden globes seem to have once again caused a stir. >> the golden globes to the oscars, what kim kardashian is to kate middleton. what? a bit louder, a bit trashier, a bit drunker. and more easily bought. >> today was clearly a winner with george clooney who himself triumphed in the best dramatic actor category. while big names walk away with those trophies, studio bosses have their eye on the financial prize. the clear victimer it was harvey weinstein, co-founder of the weinstein company.

he was clearly delighted when his film "the artist" picked up three awards. meryl streep won the acting awards for margaret thatcher's biopic, "the iron lady." it's also likely all eyes will focus on the oscar ceremony and andrew, we'll have our eyes peeled for that one. it take place on february 26th. >> absolutely, nina. good to see ricky gervais living up to his reputation. i wonder if he'll get invite number four to the golden globes. here in hong kong, dolce an gabbana continues. >> that was the scene outside the d & g store here in hong

kong. for the second time in a month, hundreds of protesters calling on the italian fashion house to make an apology for alleged discrimination. d & g allegedly tried to stop hong kong residents from taking photos of the store front. reports say that ban did not, however, apply to mainland chinese or indeed to foreigners. the placard you saw being taped to the glass reads apologize or get out. dolce and gabbana maintains it never took part in any action aimed at affecting the locals. the locals have clear differences on that statement, nina. as we look at how the european markets are faring just before we leave you for this hour, cautious start to the trading week here in europe followed by the decision of the s&p to downgrade euro zone countries, including the likes of france. we have greek debt talks perhaps get a bit shaky. that's one of of the reasons why the markets are mixed. >> we'll be talking about greek

debt talks as well. that's it for this edition, though, if you're watching to "world business today." thanks for joining us. i'm andrew stevens in hong kong. >> i'm nina dos santos in london. we'll see you again soon.