[Asher:] Hello, everyone. I'm Zain Asher at the New York Stock Exchange. Coming up on the next half hour of QUEST MEANS BUSINESS. Burberry executives survive a shareholder revolt over pay and bonuses. And if you're in Europe and looking for a job, the EU is looking out for your privacy. It says your next boss cannot, cannot just go snooping on your social media account. But first, here are the top news headlines we're following for you at this hour. U.S. President Donald Trump defended his elder son during a news conference in Paris and called Donald Trump Junior a wonderful young man, the president's son sparked fresh controversy after releasing e-mails about his meeting with a Russian attorney. Mr. Trump said most people would have taken that meeting. Now Chinese democracy activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo died from liver cancer, Liu passes away Thursday at the age of 61, still in Chinese custody. He was serving an 11-year prison sentence when he fell ill. China ignored demands that Liu be allowed to seek treatment abroad. The parents of a terminally ill British baby battling to keep him on life support stormed out of a hearing on Thursday. Charlie Gard's parents want to take him to the U.S. for experimental treatment for a rare genetic disorder. The boy's doctors argue he may suffer and not benefit from the treatment. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is in hospital. The 92-year-old collapsed while working for a charity home-building organization in Canada. The hospital spokesperson said Carter was dehydrated from working in the hot sun and is OK. U.S. Senate Republicans are pushing forward with efforts to pass a health care bill. The revised version would allow cheaper plans with fewer benefits and two senators tell CNN they are working on an alternative, they say it would keep popular provisions of Obamacare while giving more flexibility to states. On a day when the Dow raced to a new all-time high, it was only fitting that the closing bell should celebrate the next generation of high-speed racers. Somewhere in that excited crowd was the executives of DHL including Ken Allen who is with me now. Joined Enel and Formula E to celebrate the first-ever electric-powered race in New York City this weekend. Ken Allen joins me live now. Interesting, I have so much to talk to you about. It's interesting because in terms of your business strategy here in the U.S. we are hearing a lot as I'm sure you know of protectionist rhetoric coming out of the White House, I'm curious how that affects your strategy right now.
[Ken Allen, Ceo, Dhl Express:] It doesn't affect our strategy at all. Because I don't believe that anybody is really protectionist. Business is global. And with the digitization, the new technologies that link the whole world together, for the first time in history in theory, everybody could be connected. Everybody is a customer everywhere. Business continues to grow. In fact, as a part of the rhetoric, it seems to be stimulating even more growth. Because we see in every part of the world, our businesses really doing well, growing very strongly. And so, I don't think anybody takes any direct notice of some of these things. Quite honestly.
[Asher:] It's interesting that you say that obviously your business depends heavily on cross-border e-commerce. If NAFTA is renegotiated, if there's changes to the trade relationship between the U.S. and China, doesn't that worry you slightly? None at all.
[Allen:] None at all, seriously, a lot of these agreements are about tariffs, a lot of goods and products if the government decides it wants to put on a big tariff, but you still want to buy that internationally, you're still going to go ahead and do it. What we see at the moment is two things, first of all, traditional business-to-business is growing strongly again. If you think back 2008-'9 we had the Lehman crisis, and 2010-12, we had the euro crisis in Europe. And in 2012 to about '15, the end of the China boom. It wasn't the downturn in China. A lot of commodity prices collapsed and there was a lot of restructuring going on in the world. All that is behind us. Business to business is growing now again faster than GDP, international trade. That's giving us a strong basis for growth. A lot companies are re-investing and we definitely have seen that. And then the second one as you said, b-to-c, e- commerce globally. Trunk cross-border is growing 25 percent plus. So that's giving a real fill-up to our business, right? We've seen 30 consecutive quarters of growth.
[Asher:] One of the areas I'm excited to talk to you about is, areas in which you're investing here in the U.S. you're very much focused on technology, on innovation, on drones. A lot of people associate drone delivery with Amazon. You've heavily invested in that area too along with electric cars. For example, you guys are all about efficiency, making it much more efficient for the consumers when it comes to e-commerce.
[Allen:] Absolutely. So, when you think about it now, as I say, anybody, anywhere in the world can be instantly connected. So, if you see something on the internet in Nigeria that you like
[Asher:] I'm from Nigeria, by the way.
[Allen:] Who better to pick it up for you, tell you how much it will cost to fly it over here, clear customs and deliver it to your door. Any single entrepreneur anywhere can use our service to grow their business, we see many small entrepreneurs that started off on the old days, you start a business in America, you if you stay in New York, you go America-wide. Today, from day one you can be totally international. Put your goods and services on the international network. And a company like DHL can help you become a global player almost instantaneously.
[Asher:] Actually, since you brought up Nigeria, I do want to ask you about Africa. One of the issues that Africa has had to deal with for a long time is they import way more than they export, so for you guys, that means you have a lot more planes going into the continent than the other way around. What sort of challenges does that present to you?
[Allen:] On the outbound flights, we bring a lot of commodities and foodstuffs and flowers, we make sure we've got a two-way flow of traffic. But it is a good point. I think Africa overall needs to focus on the small- and medium-sized businesses. The whole digitization revolution, enables people to trade a lot more easily. It is going to pass Africa by unless the government starts giving better access to broadband, invest in small- and medium-sized business enterprises. Everything that the first world countries are doing, we just need to do more of it in Africa. In fact, part of the G20 and the B20 going on in Germany. There's a whole drive to help Africa improve its customs clearance processes, its trading position. So that we put something back in there. We need to see Africa growing. Even to date, it's not hitting, its potential. As you say, people are selling a lot in. But there's not much coming out. Another the big problem with Africa is they don't trade amongst themselves. Most African states are trading with Europe and the United States, there's not many trade between Nigeria and Kenya, for example.
[Asher:] Trade and also flights, the connectivity in general is poor. Well, Ken, we have to leave it there. I'm glad you brought up my home country. That was perfect. Shout-out to Nigerians watching. Thank you. Burberry has suffered a new shareholder revolt over executive pay, three years after an embarrassing defeat in an earlier vote on pay. This time a third of the investors rejected the compensation packages for former CEO and current creative director Christopher Bailey, as well as the CFO, Julie Brown. Royal London Asset Management actually owns a stake in Burberry and actually, led the backlash. Their corporate governance manager Ashley Hamilton Claxton told me why.
[Ashley Hamilton Claxton, Corporate Governance Manager, Royal London Asset Management:] Burberry has got a long history of pay issues, actually. So, this year the issue has been more around the recruitment of the finance director. So, she was recruited from a company called Smith and Nephew and provided a bunch of shares to compensate her for the shares that she had given up. Basically, she was forced to give back those shares this year. Because the award was deemed to be too high. And generally, the governance around at the board level has been confusing and chaotic this year, the pay decisions have been the company has changed their minds about pay. They've changed their minds about the role of the CEO, Mr. Bailey as well, and the role he plays on the board.
[Asher:] So, overruling, it's not the first time that shareholders have revolted about pay particularly at Burberry and shareholders still at times have not ended up getting what they wanted. What do you think the message isn't getting through?
[Claxton:] That's right. So, you know, in 2014, the company had more man 50 percent of shareholders vote against the pay package. Which is very significant, we don't see that very often, really. Again, this year, regarding this pay package, it was more than 30 percent votes against. I think the main concern for us is that the board doesn't seem to be getting the message. And the governance around pay has been poor. There's been a lot of confusing messages coming from the board about the pay packages and the criteria leading to the payouts for these executives and so the issue for us is really who is in charge of those pay decisions and the governance around those decisions.
[Asher:] You said governance, but you mentioned also in addition to the pay packages, the governance structure at Burberry hasn't worked for you. You've got Gobbetti, reporting to the chairman. You've got Christopher Bailey, wo is now the chief creative or creative officer. Who is also reporting to the chairman. Why don't that structure work for you?
[Claxton:] A company needs to be run well, in order for a company to be run well, there needs to be someone clearly in charge. We have the new CEO reporting to the chairman and Mr. Bailey reporting to the chairman and ultimately, we don't really know who is in charge. Making sure that there's good governance in place is really important for the best interests of the shareholders. We manage money on behalf of millions of pension savers and many of us wouldn't know, but our pension money would be invested in Burberry, so it's really important from that perspective, from the management of the company, that we have very clear lines of control.
[Asher:] What do you want to see going forward from Gobbetti the new CEO?
[Claxton:] The new CEO is starting off with a clean slate, I think he will be a good appointment and I think he can just get on with managing the business. That's not our concern. The concern is the role of the chairman and the board as a whole in overseeing the strategy of the business and overseeing Mr. Gobbetti and Mr. Bailey.
[Asher:] Donald Trump says China's president is a friend and a great leader. That's not enough. He's calling on China to get tougher with North Korea on a day when trade figures show they're only getting tighter. That story, next.