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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.

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Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live

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Speaker 2: weekdays at ten am Easter on Apple car Playing and

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Speaker 2: Broyd Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand

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Speaker 2: wherever you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.

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Speaker 3: The other really amazing story that we've heard of the

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Speaker 3: last twelve hours is what happened over in Brazil.

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Speaker 4: So President Louis.

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Speaker 3: Lula underwent emergency brain surgery and is now awake and

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Speaker 3: conscious in the ICU. Apparently he'll stay in the hospital

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Speaker 3: for about forty eight hours. We want to get more

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Speaker 3: on this on the ground with Danielle Carvallo, Bloomberg Government reporter.

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Speaker 4: Can you just walk us through the chain.

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Speaker 3: Of events that has happened and let us here and

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Speaker 3: kind of what this does to the government.

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Speaker 5: Hey, are you well, Lula? In October Lula was at

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Speaker 5: tom and he fell and hit his head. After that

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Speaker 5: he was submitted to some exams. He was doing well,

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Speaker 5: but last night, by the end of the day he

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Speaker 5: started with some headache and he decided to go to

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Speaker 5: the hospital here in Brazilia, the capital uh And after

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Speaker 5: some exams, they found there was a hemorrhage, and decided

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Speaker 5: to transfer him to Saint Paulo where you have a

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Speaker 5: better uh better hospitals there. Uh and well, and he

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Speaker 5: underwent surgery in in the morning they announced much more

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Speaker 5: complex surgery. Uh tranny outo meat. But then and at

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Speaker 5: a presser they explained it was trapping where they used

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Speaker 5: a drain to to drain the blood that was between

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Speaker 5: the skull and the and the brain, and doctors saying

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Speaker 5: he is now well.

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Speaker 1: Uh.

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Speaker 5: He will spend forty eight hours in the intensive care units. Uh,

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Speaker 5: but he will spend the whole week at the hospital

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Speaker 5: just for precausion.

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Speaker 1: Was there an actual transfer of power to his vice

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Speaker 1: president during this process.

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Speaker 5: No, Gerald WelCom and his vice president, he was in

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Speaker 5: San Paolo. He would have some agendas there, but he

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Speaker 5: traveled back to Brazilia and he will replace Lula and

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Speaker 5: house in Slovakia's Prime minister Robert Fikeel who's here today

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Speaker 5: but as a vice president, So Lula, there was no

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Speaker 5: transfer of power yet.

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Speaker 3: When nevertheless, when you see these headlines, it does come

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Speaker 3: as quite a shocker. What is the political backdrop aac

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Speaker 3: and I'm a backdrop of Brazil right now?

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Speaker 5: Well, Lula seventh is a seventh nine year old man.

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Speaker 5: He will be eighty one and twenty six, he will

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Speaker 5: when he intends to run again for Present for a

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Speaker 5: fourth term. And what happened, what is happening hah Now,

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Speaker 5: what happened in October and what happened today brings us

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Speaker 5: a big question mark on his polytical future. Will he

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Speaker 5: be able to run for present in two years? And

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Speaker 5: age became something very difficult in politics, especially after what

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Speaker 5: happened to Joe Biden in the United States. And there

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Speaker 5: isn't a clear successor for Lula in Brazil. There are

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Speaker 5: some people that brings the name of his finance minister

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Speaker 5: Fernanda daddy. And actually he is having some leading uh

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Speaker 5: in the country. Two weeks ago he was the star

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Speaker 5: of address on TV to announce suspending cut package to

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Speaker 5: the nation.

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Speaker 1: All right, Danielle, thanks so much, Yeah, thank you so much, Danielle.

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Speaker 1: We appreciate getting your reporting there, Danielle Carvallo. He's a

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Speaker 1: government reporter for Bloomberg News in our Brazilia, euro which

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Speaker 1: I forgot was the capital of Brazil. I would have

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Speaker 1: just said South Powell or something.

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Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live

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Speaker 2: weekdays at ten am. E's there on applecar Play and

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Speaker 2: royd Outo with a Bloomberg Business Act. You can also

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Speaker 2: listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station,

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Speaker 2: Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.

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Speaker 1: All right, let's get back to boy the other news

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Speaker 1: story that it certainly transfixed, I think not only New

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Speaker 1: York City, but kind of the country here and knows

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Speaker 1: that the murder of that senior executive of United Healthcare.

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Speaker 1: And now we have the arrest in charging of the suspect.

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Speaker 1: Hel Michelle Cortez Joints is here, Bloomberg, Senior editor covering healthcare. Michelle,

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Speaker 1: We've seen all the news, We've seen the tape. We

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Speaker 1: now have a murder suspect. How about from the other perspective,

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Speaker 1: how about the perspective of the company. How's the company

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Speaker 1: been reacting to this news again, the tragic loss of

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Speaker 1: one of their senior executives. What have we heard from

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Speaker 1: United Healthcare?

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Speaker 6: Well, it's absolutely been a crisis for the company. It's

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Speaker 6: a crisis not only in terms of the individual person. Right,

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Speaker 6: they have lost a senior executive, so a person that

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Speaker 6: many of them were co those two. Also, they have

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Speaker 6: a hole for the company that they need to fill.

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Speaker 6: But also there's this huge ground swell of animosity towards

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Speaker 6: the industry and they have to grapple with that as well. Honestly,

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Speaker 6: what we have heard from the beginning is that they

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Speaker 6: were shocked when this happened. I don't think this was

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Speaker 6: on anyone's being go card for twenty twenty four and

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Speaker 6: they just didn't know how to react initially when this happened.

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Speaker 6: The first things that we saw was increased security at

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Speaker 6: the United Health campuses in Washington and Minneapolis and in

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Speaker 6: New York, and we have seen them taking executives off

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Speaker 6: of their web pages that type of thing. But in

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Speaker 6: terms of actual communication to the outside world, there's been

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Speaker 6: exceedingly little from United Health, and even internally, some of

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Speaker 6: the reports that we have seen have essentially downplayed the

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Speaker 6: situation and told employees to not really pay attention to

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Speaker 6: social media, to not take this outpouring to heart. They

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Speaker 6: do have an awful lot of work that's going to

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Speaker 6: have to come. They have not yet done it, and

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Speaker 6: it's going to be interest to see how it plays out.

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Speaker 6: There's really not an awful lot that they can do

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Speaker 6: at this point, given how much antagonism, animosity, and straight

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Speaker 6: up hatred towards the company from people who have suffered

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Speaker 6: in terms of not being able to get the kind

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Speaker 6: of health care and coverage.

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Speaker 1: That they've needed.

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Speaker 6: I think that it's been really shocking for many people, which.

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Speaker 3: Is so surprising because you would have thought when you

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Speaker 3: have a tragic event like this, it would be the

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Speaker 3: opposite that you'd see an outpouring of support, right, and

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Speaker 3: that's just not been the case. How has it reflected

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Speaker 3: in United health but also just in other companies as well,

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Speaker 3: like there was a debacle with Anthem last week and

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Speaker 3: paying and enthusiologists.

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Speaker 6: Right, Absolutely, this is not something that's specific to United

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Speaker 6: Healthcare at all. It is something that comes from the

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Speaker 6: health insurance industry.

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Speaker 1: Obviously.

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Speaker 6: The way these companies operate they do when you talk

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Speaker 6: to them about it. What they're doing is they're trying

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Speaker 6: to make healthcare more efficient, more afordable, making it possible

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Speaker 6: for people to get access to the care that they need.

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Speaker 6: But in fact, the way that a lot of them

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Speaker 6: make money is by reducing the expenditures for healthcare insurance.

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Speaker 6: And then again, not specific to g United Healthcare. We've

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Speaker 6: seen other companies dial back there in person appearances. They've

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Speaker 6: had executives pull back events that were going to be

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Speaker 6: public that we're closed, moved online. Everyone is reevaluating their

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Speaker 6: security at this point, and the way that they move

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Speaker 6: forward at this point is just uncertain. How you can

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Speaker 6: actually rectify something that is systemic to the industry. This

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Speaker 6: is how it operates. So they're going to need to

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Speaker 6: rethink and how they go forward. I don't think that

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Speaker 6: they know yet. They're still trying to figure that out.

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Speaker 1: Red headline just crossing the Bloomberg Terminal, Saudi's piff PIF

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Speaker 1: said to near deal to invest in PGA Tour Enterprises.

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Speaker 1: So we'll have some more reporting on that for our

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Speaker 1: golf fans out there. And Michelle, you know, I think

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Speaker 1: when this news first broke, we said, you know, the

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Speaker 1: headlines were United Healthcare CEO, but we came to learn

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Speaker 1: later that it was a CEO of a subsidiary, not

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Speaker 1: the overall global CEO. And some people were saying, how

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Speaker 1: could a CEO not have security, But again, he wasn't

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Speaker 1: the CEO of the entire corporation, just of a subsidiary.

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Speaker 1: I guess they have to rethink some of their security

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Speaker 1: for some of their mid level executives and leadership as well.

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Speaker 7: Right.

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Speaker 6: Well, let's so, Brian Thompson was the CEO OFED of

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Speaker 6: United Healthcare, which is not United Health Group, right, It

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Speaker 6: is the insurance subsidiary which is the biggest of United

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Speaker 6: health If you actually line that up with other SMP companies,

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Speaker 6: it is one of the biggest. It would be independently.

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Speaker 6: Is kind of like, you know, the economy of California

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Speaker 6: or Texas is a massive, massive company. He made ten

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Speaker 6: million dollars a year. I mean, this is not a small,

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Speaker 6: low level person. It is shocking that he didn't have

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Speaker 6: any kind of security. Many people don't have security. I mean,

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Speaker 6: you can drive up to his house. It is I

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Speaker 6: used to just live down the road from them in Minneapolis.

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Speaker 6: It is a lovely, lovely home, but certainly not gated,

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Speaker 6: no restrictions around it. And I don't think that people

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Speaker 6: in this industry realized the animosity. And again, no one

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Speaker 6: thought that this could have ever possibly happened, and so,

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Speaker 6: you know, not maybe low level employees, certainly, I think

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Speaker 6: everybody who's affiliated with the industry at this point is

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Speaker 6: rethinking their own security, their own you know, morality, their

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Speaker 6: own you know, how they're working forward with what they

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Speaker 6: do professionally, but in terms of security, this is an

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Speaker 6: area where everybody is reaching out now. They absolutely have

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Speaker 6: to get this square.

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Speaker 3: Away, Michelle, what could be changes that the industry could

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Speaker 3: take to sort of mitigate this animosity like that? I'm

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Speaker 3: sure we could list a lot of issues, but what's

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Speaker 3: like a main issue that needs to be really looked

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Speaker 3: at and corrected.

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Speaker 1: It's such a good question.

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Speaker 6: It really does go to the fundamentals of the industry itself.

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Speaker 6: The way that it works is insurance companies put up

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Speaker 6: hurdles to make sure that people are getting the appropriate

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Speaker 6: care and only the care that they need. And sometimes

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Speaker 6: the argument is is that they're going too far, and

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Speaker 6: we're seeing these reports coming out on social media, people

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Speaker 6: talking about how they haven't had access to care, how

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Speaker 6: they have been turned down for policies for their kids,

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Speaker 6: their family members, their loved ones. There was a huge

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Speaker 6: outrage about how United Health particularly was using artificial intelligence

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Speaker 6: to turn down insurance requests, and then they make people

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Speaker 6: and doctors jump through these hoops over and over in

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Speaker 6: order to get access to these kind of what many

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Speaker 6: people would say, arguably are things that should be covered

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Speaker 6: and it is just part of the process. Now, we

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Speaker 6: could certainly see some type of a reconsideration of that.

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Speaker 6: I don't know that they would want to be doing

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Speaker 6: anything like that, and this current moment, right you don't

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Speaker 6: want to actually respond in any way that might be

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Speaker 6: giving kind of fuel to the fire of the people

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Speaker 6: who are coming out against the industry. So I would imagine,

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Speaker 6: you know, in the weeks and months to come, we

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Speaker 6: might see some kind of reaction in terms of prior authorizations,

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Speaker 6: in terms of denials, in terms of appeals, in terms

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Speaker 6: of these boards that they have that are set up

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Speaker 6: to actually evaluate whether people should be covered or not.

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Speaker 6: All of those things I'm sure are going to be

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Speaker 6: under consideration.

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Speaker 1: Hi, Michelle, thank you so much. We appreciate that. Michelle Cortez,

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Speaker 1: a senior editor covering in the healthcare for Bloomberg News,

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Speaker 1: coming to us from our Washington, DC bureau. You put

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Speaker 1: up the stock of United Healthcare. You NH is the ticker.

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Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live

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Speaker 2: weekdays at ten am Eastern on e FO. Card playing

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Speaker 2: droyd Otto with the Bloomberg Business app Listen on demand

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Speaker 2: wherever you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.

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Speaker 3: It was the news that we heard all around the

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Speaker 3: world weekend. Of course, Asad's fall in Syria just putting

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Speaker 3: the world in the Middle East into much more chaos,

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Speaker 3: and we wanted to break down what to expect, what

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Speaker 3: some key smilestones a hard to look at with Ned Lazarus,

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Speaker 3: Associate Professor of International Affairs over George Washington University, what's

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Speaker 3: the TikTok? What's a timeline that you're going to be

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Speaker 3: watching to judge the state of Syria?

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Speaker 7: Well, Syria is multiple things happening at once. It's been

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Speaker 7: multiple wars within a war. There are things we have

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Speaker 7: to watch. One is the establishment of post war governance.

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Speaker 7: Are the rebels led by the faction Hayataharrira Sham able

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Speaker 7: to establish a functioning transitional government. They have nominated a

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Speaker 7: prime minister who was governing their sort of self administered

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Speaker 7: zone in northwestern Syria before, Ahamad al Bashir is his name.

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Speaker 7: They have ordered the state offices to continue functioning. They've

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Speaker 7: asked the government to continue working. They have also crucially

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Speaker 7: declared amnesty for you know, regular soldiers of the regime,

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Speaker 7: meaning they're not going to arrest people who were fighters

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Speaker 7: in the Syrian army, in the regime's army, and that's

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Speaker 7: that's an important declaration of intentions, though they have said

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Speaker 7: that they will absolutely attempt to prosecute leaders, both military

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Speaker 7: and political, who were responsible for the horrific atrocities committed

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Speaker 7: by that regime. That's one one area to watch, But

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Speaker 7: there's also a lot of military action continuing in Syria.

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Speaker 7: Israel has undertaken several hundred attacks attempting to destroy essentially

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Speaker 7: the arsenal of the Syrian army. Today, the Israeli Navy

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Speaker 7: and Air Force destroyed the Syrian naval fleet in the

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Speaker 7: port city of Latakia, and chemical weapons facilities, research facilities,

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Speaker 7: weapons storage facilities are being bombed from the air all

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Speaker 7: across the country by the Israelis. There's also another war

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Speaker 7: within a war in Syria, which is in the north

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Speaker 7: where Turkish forces and Turkish backed Syrian forces are fighting

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Speaker 7: Kurdish Syrian forces, and that has been going on for

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Speaker 7: a while, but that is also escalating right now. And finally,

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Speaker 7: we have our own deployment of US troops in the

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Speaker 7: desert in central eastern Syria where they are have been

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Speaker 7: stationed for years to try and prevent the re emergence

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Speaker 7: of ISIS. Now, when you have a total breakdown of

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Speaker 7: order like this, that's fertile ground group like ISIS to reconstitute,

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Speaker 7: takeover territory, et cetera. So the US forces right now,

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Speaker 7: the administration has said we're going to keep them there

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Speaker 7: in order to try and prevent ISIS from reconstituting.

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Speaker 1: What do you think the do we have any indication

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Speaker 1: what the income incoming Trump administration, what its policy may

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Speaker 1: be to Syria Syria, given what we've just seen over

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Speaker 1: the last few days.

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Speaker 7: Well, I guess the best indicator for a Trump policy

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Speaker 7: is his Twitter account, right or truth social His post

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Speaker 7: on this issue was that this is none of our

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Speaker 7: you know, this is not our our business and we

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Speaker 7: should stay out. And I imagine that he's aware that

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Speaker 7: we have nine hundred troops there and that you know

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Speaker 7: that ISIS was a problem for us and you know,

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Speaker 7: probably would be again. But that was that was his

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Speaker 7: statement on it. Another important dementia, and you know it

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Speaker 7: was Russian forces that Russian and Iranian forces and has

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Speaker 7: Belah of course that helped asad uh, you know, retake power.

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Speaker 3: Uh.

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Speaker 7: Just a few years ago, and Russia had cultivated Syria

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Speaker 7: as its strategic base in the Middle East. It had

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Speaker 7: you know, ships in the port of Latakia on the Mediterranean,

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Speaker 7: and you know, good amount of air air force at

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Speaker 7: station in Steria for a time. But the Russian ships

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Speaker 7: are reported to have left the port of Tartus in Syria.

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Speaker 7: So that is another thing to watch, is whether Russia

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Speaker 7: makes an effort to retain its foothold and influence in

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Speaker 7: the country or whether because it's so preoccupied with the

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Speaker 7: Ukrainian War, it has really you know, it's ready to

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Speaker 7: see that.

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Speaker 4: All right, Well, we appreciate that. Thank you very much

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Speaker 4: for the update.

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Speaker 3: D Lazar, Associate Professor International Affairs at George Washington University.

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Speaker 3: And in the markets, Paull, it's just obviously, how do

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Speaker 3: you price to you a political risk? Like no one

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Speaker 3: had on a bingo card that this was going to

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Speaker 3: happen on the geopaul sector, So like how do you

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Speaker 3: price it? And in some ways many analysts say, we've

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Speaker 3: just become very complacent in how he priced to you

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Speaker 3: apolitical risk.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and you see that in the oil market, which

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Speaker 1: I know you follow closer to you know, Brent still

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Speaker 1: at seventy two dollars a barrow. Didn't really see any

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Speaker 1: major spike here, so we'll keep an eye on that.

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Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live

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Speaker 3: their business. More enough to have one of them with

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Speaker 3: us right now. So, for those of you who don't know,

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Speaker 3: Glencore is a metal behemoth. They basically produce and trade

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Speaker 3: all the metals that everyone needs in daily life, whether

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Speaker 3: you're looking at a transition metal like lithium or something

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Speaker 3: straight up like copper. They also have a recycling business

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Speaker 3: that maybe lesser known. They like to recycle end of

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Speaker 3: life Electronics, lithium. I own batteries and other critical metal

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Speaker 3: containing products which will be key by the way in

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Speaker 3: the energy transition, as we just run out of the

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Speaker 3: stuff in the ground. So we're lucky to be joined

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Speaker 3: now by Kunal Sinha. He's a global head of recycling

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Speaker 3: over at Glencore.

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Speaker 4: Kunall, thanks for joining us. How has the Glencore.

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Speaker 3: Recycling business changed over the last sort of few years?

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Speaker 4: Like where were you guys? Where are you guys now?

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Speaker 8: Thanks Alex, thanks for having me. Yeah, I think it's

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Speaker 8: a less known part of Glencore. I would say over

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Speaker 8: the last four or five years, it's changed in a

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Speaker 8: few different ways. Increasingly the recycling, if you think about

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Speaker 8: recycling traditionally, is a very linear sort of value chain

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Speaker 8: activity like everything else used to be. I think it's

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Speaker 8: headed more towards a circularity sort of concept, so it

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Speaker 8: will still be recycling, but the focus is how do

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Speaker 8: you put those critical metals that you recycle back in

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Speaker 8: the loop into the battery supply chain or the auto

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Speaker 8: supply chain, or copper back into the green manufacturing supply chain.

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Speaker 8: So that's sort of one change and then the other changes.

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Speaker 8: We are pretty pretty substantially present in the copper value chain.

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Speaker 8: With we recycle things like end of live electronics. We've

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Speaker 8: been doing that for since the eighties. We've been recycling

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Speaker 8: lithium and batteries for twenty years. I think the other

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Speaker 8: thing that changed is we've made a lot of investments

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Speaker 8: in the lithium and battery space, especially recognizing the need

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Speaker 8: to recover lithium, the need to handle large battery packs,

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Speaker 8: the need to address the fact that there will be

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Speaker 8: a lot of giga factories they already are and will

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Speaker 8: be that will produce a lot of scraps. So just

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Speaker 8: keeping an eye on the industry and how it's changing

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Speaker 8: and hence how our recycling business needs to change to address.

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Speaker 8: And then some of the more near term recent areas

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Speaker 8: that we are adapting to, our recycling of solar panels,

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Speaker 8: recycling of electric motors from electric vehicles. So we're always

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Speaker 8: keeping an eye on the next big pile of post

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Speaker 8: consumer stuff that comes along, and we'll make sure we

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Speaker 8: stay ahead of the game in terms of getting it

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Speaker 8: and recycling it.

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Speaker 1: Can you give us a sensitive to what extent kind

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Speaker 1: of just industry wide recycling is impacting the supply of

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Speaker 1: the metals we need and use.

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Speaker 8: Yeah, I think it varies by metals. If you look

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Speaker 8: at copper, which is a bell weather metal and very

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Speaker 8: heavily talked about, no matter whether you look at the

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Speaker 8: green aspect or energy transition or just simple AI which

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Speaker 8: will need a whole huge amount of electricity, and hence

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Speaker 8: the great copper is always in need. If you look

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Speaker 8: at copper, you know, it's roughly a little less than

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Speaker 8: thirty million terms a year of defined supply twenty eight

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Speaker 8: twenty nine. Of that already, about six to seven million

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Speaker 8: every year comes from recycled sources, so it's not insignificant.

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Speaker 8: When you look at some of the other medals like nickel, cobordi, lithium,

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Speaker 8: they're not as far along as copper, but there had

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Speaker 8: been a lot of posh so those metals, the recycled

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Speaker 8: portion is coming, especially in Comora, there's a lot of

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Speaker 8: recycled supply now. So it's you know, it's a function

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Speaker 8: of how important the metal is, how much post consumed

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Speaker 8: post manufacturing feedstock is on the market to be able

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Speaker 8: to be recycled. So copper just benefits from being a

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Speaker 8: very mature and old sort of if I can call

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Speaker 8: it met some of the newer medals will get there with.

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Speaker 3: Time gonell is recycling for Glencore a profitable bulb business.

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Speaker 8: Yeah, it's a good question for us. Yes, it's a

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Speaker 8: profitable business. We've we've shared some numbers in the past.

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Speaker 8: I mean through the cycle we make somewhere between two

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Speaker 8: hunred and fifty million ABIDUK contribution from our recycling business,

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Speaker 8: which is recycling a whole bunch of these things. Of course,

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Speaker 8: compared to glend Courzoni, that's a very small fraction. But

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Speaker 8: if you look at any independent recycling company, I think,

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Speaker 8: you know, you'd be hard pressed to find too many

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Speaker 8: with that level of profitability as a pure play recycling company.

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Speaker 1: Any reason to believe that the recycling I guess trends

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Speaker 1: in the metals business broad they'd find. Will that change

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Speaker 1: with a new administration coming in? Do you believe?

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Speaker 7: Don't think so.

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Speaker 8: I mean we've been looking at recycling for in North

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Speaker 8: America over the last you know, thirty forty years, so

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Speaker 8: we've been through a lot of changes in administration, policies,

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Speaker 8: lens and then the good thing about recycling is it's

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Speaker 8: truly an evergreen business. It's sort of it hits some

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Speaker 8: good policy points on both sides of the aisle. I

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Speaker 8: think if you look at where policy priorities seem to

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Speaker 8: be headed, it's a profitable business. It will create a

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Speaker 8: domestic source of critical minerals, It creates domestic manufacturing jobs.

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Speaker 8: We have discussed the importance of things like semiconductor and

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Speaker 8: electronics manufacturing the go to national security issues. So there's

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Speaker 8: a lot of tailments for recycling that I think would

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Speaker 8: align well with where policy making is headed in the US.

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Speaker 3: In just thirty seconds, can you tell me what kind

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Speaker 3: of price you might need for copper for a cycling

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Speaker 3: to be profitable and if that's lower than the actual

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Speaker 3: mind cost?

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Speaker 8: So funny enough, I mean the actual copper price doesn't

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Speaker 8: really matter so much. It does matter when you're buying

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Speaker 8: that's a very high grade copper scrap. We tend to

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Speaker 8: not do a lot of that. There is this phenomena

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Speaker 8: where when the copper price spikes, there is this notion

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Speaker 8: that some secondary supply will come into the market. And

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Speaker 8: that's just because there's a lot of the art sitting

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Speaker 8: a lot of material with that price, it's opportunistic to

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Speaker 8: now I'll sell it, right, But it behaves more like

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Speaker 8: copper concentrates. If I can drop attlee where it's more

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Speaker 8: the tcsrcs that matter on the metal price, all right.

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Speaker 4: Elliate there canal, Thanks lack Canal.

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Speaker 3: Sin Hat's go behind a recycling over at Blankworm.

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