

Big Boss Interview
BBC News
Big Boss Interview is where the most high-profile chief executives and entrepreneurs come to give you their insights and experiences of running the UK's biggest and well-known businesses. The series is presented by Sean Farrington, Felicity Hannah and Will Bain, who you'd normally hear presenting the business news on BBC Radio 4's Today programme as well as BBC 5live's Wake Up To Money. Each week they'll be finding out just what it takes to run a huge organisation and what the day to day challenges and opportunities are. A new episode will be dropping every Friday morning, and you can get in contact with the team that makes it by emailing bigboss@bbc.co.uk
Episodes
Mentioned books

Jun 11, 2016 • 55min
Euro 16 Underway in France
France wins the opening game of the Euros tournament, but will businesses lose out as striking workers disrupt the country's transport system?The US news site Gawker files for bankruptcy after being told to pay 140 million dollars in damages to a celebrity wrestler Plus the feat of engineering over common sense - we find out more about the multi billion dollar satellite constellation which was very nearly crashed back down to earth.And Susannah Streeter is joined throughout the programme by Professor Danny Samson from the University of Melbourne in Australia.(Photo: Nice, France where some Euro 2016 matches will be played. Credit: AFP/Getty)

Jun 9, 2016 • 55min
Who Would be Better for US Business, Trump or Clinton?
So we now know, barring major incidents, that Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump are the choices for US President in November. But what are they offering American business? That's a concern of course for the US Chamber of Commerce. We hear from J.D Harrison, a senior editor at the US Chamber of Commerce based in Washington.The creative money-spinner that is Harry Potter moved on to its latest incarnation in London this week with the start of a series of previews of "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child". It's been described as the eighth Potter story - although it's the first to originate as a piece of theatre. But does it have the magic of its printed predecessors? Our arts correspondent Vincent Dowd was among those blessed with a ticket and gives us his view.It seems the UK isn't the only country in Europe where enthusiasm for the European Union is less than whole-hearted. Britain may be the country which is about to have a referendum on membership - but new research by the US-based Pew Research centre suggests more than sixty percent of French people have an unfavourable view of the EU. Poland is the country with the largest proportion of EU fans. In Germany favourable is ahead by a fraction: 50% to 48%. So what does this tell us? Roger Bootle, the Chairman of Capital Economics, who's campaigning for Britain to leave the European Union - and Professor Sebastian Dullien, at the University of Applied Science in Berlin discuss.You know how it is - you're sitting in a café and you notice the person who just departed left their newspaper behind. You casually pick it up and start reading. In Morocco, you would be committing a crime. The authorities have banned people from reading in public newspapers bought by other people. Many Moroccans have taken to social media to ridicule the ban. One suggested special uniformed Newspaper Police might arrest 'illegal' readers, seize their offending newspapers and burn them publicly in the square. We hear from the BBC's Sidy Yansane in Casablanca.Throughout the programme we are joined by two guests on opposite sides of the Pacific. Duncan Clarke, the author and consultant in Beijing and Peter Morici, Professor of International Business at the University of Maryland in Washington.(Picture: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a campaign event at Clinton Middle School. Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

May 26, 2016 • 56min
Euro-quotas for Amazon Prime and Netflix proposed
Officials in Brussels are proposing rules that would force online video services in the European Union to ensure at least twenty percent of their content is made in the EU. The biggest companies in the sector, Netflix and Amazon Prime, are American and much of their material currently comes from Hollywood. Supporters of the plan say it would have "a positive effect on cultural diversity". EU rules already oblige television broadcasters to spend at least half of their time showing European works, including material made in their own country.The world's biggest publicly traded oil company, Exxon Mobil, has largely seen down a rebellion at its annual general meeting over its climate change policies. Only a third of shareholders backed a motion that would have forced the company to work out a strategy against global warming. However a majority did approve a motion that could allow green activists to nominate members of the company's board.A report by the charity Human Rights Watch says thousands of children, some as young as eight years old, are working on tobacco farms in Indonesia. The country is the fifth biggest tobacco producer in the world. The authors say the farms involved supply companies including Philip Morris - the maker of Marlboro - and British American Tobacco, which owns cigarette brands including Dunhill. Our reporter has been to hear the stories of some of the child labourers.We speak to a group called Eco Peace Middle East, which has united Israelis and Palestinians on some of the biggest issues in the middle east, including water provision.And a report on our technology correspondent, Rory Cellan Jones on a new breed of robots - designed to work alongside their human masters.Our guests for the hour, on opposite sides of the Pacific - Peter Morici, Profesor of International Business at the University of Maryland - who's in Washington, and Puja Mehra of the Hindu in Delhi.(Picture: French actress Nadia Fares at the premiere of the French TV show 'Marseille', a Netflix co-production. Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

May 14, 2016 • 55min
Argentina Corruption Charges
Former Argentine President Cristina Fernandez has been indicted over accusations that she oversaw irregularities in the central bank's sale of dollars in the futures market.
The number of migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey has fallen dramatically...as Ankara tightens the border, but elsewhere in the Mediterranean, attempts to stop the smugglers are failing.
Miners seeking millions of dollars in compensation for contracting a serious lung disease have won a landmark judgement against the gold mining industry. The High Court in South Africa has given the go ahead for a class action by thousands of workers who developed silicosis while working underground.
The head of GSK Sir Andrew Witty tells Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal why developing new drugs is so expensive.
And throughout the programme Susannah Streeter is joined by Danny Samson, Professor of Management at Melbourne University in Australia.
And the power of Eurovision - why the song contest has such an enduring appeal.

May 13, 2016 • 55min
Brazil's New Leader
In Brazil, the new president is putting together a very different-looking cabinet to his predecessor - a much more market friendly one. His new finance minister is Henriques Meirelles, former head of the central bank. So what is the likely effect going to be on Brazil's wobbly finances?"Fantastically corrupt". That's how British prime minister David Cameron described Nigeria and Afghanistan earlier in the week. On Thursday he was hosting a global anti-corruption conference in London. Fifty states were represented at the summit, alongside banks, civil society organisations and the International Monetary Fund. Though delegates promised to make tackling corruption a top priority, the meeting led to few firm commitments. Just six countries agreed to publish registers of who really owns companies in their territories, a key goal of anti-corruption campaigners. So - just how much was achieved?St Louis, in Missouri, made international news two years ago because of race riots in the suburb of Ferguson. But it would rather be known for something else. It's become the unlikely capital of chess - in America if not - here's a boast - the world. David Edmonds has just returned from St Louis, which was hosting the US National Championship.Can you copyright a language? Obviously you can't claim the rights to Russian, or Spanish or Swahili, but what about a made-up language? That is an issue that an American court will look at later this year when Paramount Pictures and CBS sue the makers of a Star Trek fan movie. One part of that case is the use of the invented language for the warlike alien race, the Klingons. Klingon is a BIG deal. It was invented in the early 1980s by the linguist Marc Okrand for the Star Trek movies.
And Roger Hearing is joined by two guests for the hour on opposite sides of the Pacific - David Kuo of the Motley Fool in Singapore and Ralph Silva of the Silva Network in Toronto.

Feb 25, 2016 • 56min
India Special: Bollywood's Challenges
Rahul Tandon looks at India's changing entertainment industry - the competition that Hindi films face from regional cinema and Hollywood. He also speaks to one of India's leading actors Manoj Bajpayee about his latest film Aligarh, based on the life of gay professor Ramchandra Siras. Plus the risks and opportunities posed to the industry by the ever growing numbers of Indian smartphone and tablet owners. Also, why aren't more Indian bands cracking the international music scene? Rahul hears from rock band Indus Creed. Joining Rahul in Mumbai is author and film critic Deepanjana Pal and from Boston, journalist and academic Hasit Shah.(Photo: Manoj Bajpayee in Aligarh. Credit: Eros International)

Dec 16, 2015 • 56min
Poachers Threaten Reef in South China Sea
The BBC has exclusive evidence of the large-scale destruction of a reef in the South China Sea by Chinese poachers and the theft of valuable and endangered giant clams. The Philippines, which is pursuing its own legal claim to many of the islands, says the Chinese navy is allowing the poachers to plunder the reefs with impunity. Rupert Wingfield-Hayes has the story.All public schools in the Los Angeles area were closed on Tuesday after a ‘credible threat’ was received via email. Almost 700,000 students were affected. A similar threat was received by police in New York, but was not deemed credible - schools remained open. We hear from families caught up in the California alert.Also in the programme, the US central bank the Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates tomorrow, for the first time in almost a decade. Our economic commentator Roger Bootle offers his assessment.We discuss big data, as the EU announces new laws requiring companies to ask permission to keep clients data. Customers are also given the right to demand their details are removed from a company's database. However, a breach of the rules could see firms fined around 4% of global revenues.And the artists from a Grammy shortlisted album who definitely won’t be attending the awards ceremony – because they’re all behind bars. We speak to the producer of the Zomba Prison Project in Malawi.We're joined throughout the programme by Mark Miller, Managing Editor at Marketplace in LA and Madhavan Narayanan, columnist and tech writer on the Hindustan Times in Delhi.(Picture: Reef in South China Sea. Credit: BBC)


