Colorado Springs Police Chasing Gunman On The Loose Near Planned Parenthood Clinic; Black Friday Bringing Out The Worst In People; The Significance Of Black Friday and Cyber Monday To Retailers; Three Of China's Top Brokerage Houses Under Investigation
RICHARD QUEST, CNN HOST: We begin with breaking news from the U.S. state of Colorado. The police in Colorado Springs are chasing a gunman who's on the loose either at or near a Planned Parenthood clinic. Now, hospital officials say at least four people have been injured. We don't know all the circumstances. And we don't know the severity. The police are saying at least three officers have also been wounded. What is not clear is how many gunmen or shooters there are and if any hostages are being held or indeed the depths and severity of the situation at the moment. As you can see, a major, a sizeable, as you would understand, police operation is now under way in Colorado. At CNN, we've spoken to the staff at stores in the area. They say no one is being let in or out. Employees are being kept at the back of buildings. In the words of one employee, the situation is described as extremely fluid. And we will obviously be bringing you the latest developments as it develops. There is a significance, of course, in all of this because Planned Parenthood is very much at the center of a major political controversy in the United States where the Republican Party and the Republican Congress is trying to use laws to defund or to withdraw federal funds from Planned Parenthood. And this has become an extremely relevant hot political potato in the political debate. So while we wait for more details on that, we shall move on.</s>QUEST: Tonight, it's the biggest shopping day of the year in the United States. It's called Black Friday, and it has delivered the kind of scenes of which we've become accustomed to over the years. Quite simply, consumers sort of losing their cool and going crazy. For instance, take a look at this brawl in Louisville, Kentucky, which was captured on a smartphone.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Does anybody else need a map? To let you know where all our items are.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm ready and I got my fist up if somebody tries to steal something from me.</s>QUEST: Good lord. I think is what classed as a bit of argy bargy at the sales this year and this may be the year to start questioning the hype about this crazy day of retail heaven. Black Friday is really becoming a lot more like black November because we're seeing major retailers offering price discounts throughout the entire month. I'll show you some of the examples.</s>QUEST: Target has been offering ten days of discounts from November 22nd to December the 1st. It includes deals like Black Friday-like deals, but they took place on the 23rd and the 25th. Amazon had Black Friday deals a whole week early, beginning on November the 20th. National Federation Retail survey says shoppers didn't even wait until November to start buying holiday presents. 40 percent started buying their holiday gifts before Halloween. And you can see why when you look at the situation facing retailers for whom it's been a very difficult year so far. Wal-Mart is down some 30 percent on year to date. Target, as the share price is down some 3 percent. Macy's is down nearly 40 percent. Sears down 33 percent. Best Buy down 18 percent. Amazon -- and this is the significance here -- Amazon is up a soaring 117 percent. So bricks and mortar, bricks and mortar are down. Even bricks and mortar who have strong online presence, amazon sharply up. Paul la Monica is CNN's money digital correspondent. He joins me now from New York.</s>QUEST: Paul, this -- we'll talk about the individual retailers in a moment, but the breakdown of what we've seen, first of all, give me the significance of Black Monday to the retailers.</s>PAUL LA MONICA, CNN MONEY DIGITAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Black Friday and Cyber Monday is very important. It is when most retailers do start making money in the fourth quarter of the year, the holidays always very significant for them. But as you pointed out Richard, with those stocks, Amazon has blown away everyone in retail.</s>MONICA: They really have everyone on their heels. Amazon now has a market value of about $315 billion. So it's worth more than those other five retailers that you showed combined by a wide margin. It really is stunning just how so many people now are choosing to buy online and when they do, it's more often than not Amazon than any of the other traditional retailers, even though all of them have invested heavily in their own digital operations. They just haven't been able to catch up to Amazon yet.</s>QUEST: That's the significant point I just want to focus on because every one of those retailers has large-scale online presence, particularly, for example, Best Buy and Macy's. But Amazon has wormed its way into the psyche as being the online store.</s>MONICA: Exactly. And it's even easier now, now that people have smartphones and other mobile devices that they can use to shop, and shopping on a phone is something that has become fairly common. You can go to an actual retail store and comparison shop and then go and look on Amazon and see if it's cheaper there and buy. A lot of people have said somewhat derogatory comments about big brick and mortar retailers that they're nothing more now than just the showrooms of Amazon, and it's really amazing just what Amazon has done to this industry.</s>QUEST: Paul la Monica in New York joining us on the Black Friday -- I got my Black Fridays and my Black Mondays and my Cyber Mondays what confused, but the gist remains the same. That's when the shopping takes place. (Inaudible) Black Friday sales we were talking there about Macy's, and it had a lackluster day on the stock market.</s>QUEST: Macy's shares fell more than 1 percent during the session. And the chief executive, Terry Lundgren, has been speaking to CNNs Cristina Alesci. He told her customers turned out in their droves when the doors opened at the flagship store in New York on Thanksgiving night.</s>TERRY LUNDREN, CHIEF EXECUTIVE MACYS: So we opened the doors at 6:00 last night as we had last year and the year before. And it was a bit of a madhouse. We had -- I stood at the front door for 21 minutes, never saw a break of more than a foot between customers coming in. And it was great because, you know, we just love to see people, you know, saying it's the start of the season. Here we go. We want to shop today. Glad you're open. Boom. And me and my volunteers who volunteered to work last night at Macy's were all here ready to go and we had a great night.</s>CRISTINA ALESCI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: But this into context for most people, how important is Black Friday to stores like Macy's?</s>LUNDGREN: It's extremely important. You know the business started, like I said, 6:00 o'clock. If you take 6:00 o'clock last night to 6:00 o'clock tonight, that period of time is going to clearly be the largest volume day of the entire year. And it really gets people in the mood. So we were talking earlier how, you know, it's been a very warm third quarter, warm November. I think, it's like, 251 years since it's been this warm. Some staggering number. And customers typically don't buy coats and boots and down comforters when it's warm. Last night they came out. They bought because it's the start of the season. So they said hey, it's time. Here we go.</s>ALESCI: Is that why last quarter wasn't as strong as you would have liked? Is it the warm weather? Is it currency? What's causing it?</s>LUNDGREN: Well, you hit two of the very big issues. Clearly the warm weather is a big factor. But currency, too, the strength of the dollar is definitely preventing consumers from coming from Europe, coming from Brazil, coming from other countries to shop here. And when they do get here, if they're here, they're really not spending because they're seeing how much more expensive it is to buy against the U.S Dollar.</s>ALESCI: Let's talk about the U.S. consumer. What is the state of the U.S. consumer? Because we saw the U.S. consumer saving a lot more than probably you would have liked to see.</s>LUNDGREN: You know actually, I like the idea that they're saving. What I don't love is that they're buying automobiles. And they're buying home improvement, spending money in health care. I would love them to say okay, I've got a car now. My home's got great new added bedroom. It's time for me to fill it up with stuff from Macy's including my closet. So I'm waiting for that shift. They've got money. To your point, they've got savings, more so than last year. I'm just ready for them to let it go and spend it with us.</s>ALESCI: And I've got to ask you just because I cover retail for CNN, and there has been a certain degree of anti-Black Friday sentiment from other retailers like REI which shut down on Black Friday and is encouraging its employees to go outside and paying people to take the day off. I mean, how do you think -- does that play into your decision making at all?</s>LUNDGREN: You know definitely what you just described does not. What plays into my decision 100 percent of the time is my customer. And I look at - you know I consider myself the chief customer officer. And my customer clearly wanted Macy's to be open last night. I mean It's not even a question. They clearly wanted Macy's to be open last night. And so we had our employees volunteer because we hired 85,000 additional people for November and December alone at our company. So we could say would you like to work on Thanksgiving or not? And our core employees got to choose. The reality is, a lot of our core employees wanted to work so they could have Black Friday off. So that decision was a good decision, it was the right decision, particularly if your competitors are open.</s>QUEST: Chief executive of Macy's talking to Cristina Alesci as Black Friday wins its merry way through the ringing tills. Chinese stocks tumbled as it emerged that the government cracked down on brokerage firm has now widened.</s>QUEST: Pacific Security is China's largest brokerage admitted that it was now being investigated by the Securities Watchdog.</s>QUEST: Another firm has also made a similar admission. Take a look at the numbers.</s>QUEST: And the Shanghai composite was off by 5.5 percent. The main index in Shenzhen was off 6 percent. And in Hong Kong, it was the Hong Kong Hang Seng, and that fell the best part of nearly 2 percent.</s>QUEST: The authorities have been taking a long, hard look at the securities industry after share prices fell very sharply in the summer. And with that share price fall, of course the rest of the world experienced extreme volatility. The news that the crackdown is not over has spooked investors. CNN's Asia-Pacific editor Andrew Stevens has sent us this dispatch from Hong Kong.</s>ANDREW STEVENS, CNN ASIA-PACIFIC EDITOR: Just when it looked like the volatility in China's battered stock market was easing, the government has thrown another spanner into the works. Three of the country's top brokerage houses announcing in the past 24 hours that they're under investigation from the government watchdog, the CSRC. No specific reason has been given, but that statement alone was enough to send the price of the top brokerage CITIC Securities down by the maximum allowable 10 percent. And the overall Shanghai composite down by 5.5 percent. And so ended a period of relative calm that has seen the composite climb 20 percent in recent months. This is not so much a new development as the latest twist in an old story. It began in the summer when authorities did virtually everything in their power to stop a collapse of share prices in Shanghai. The intervention did work. The market fall ended after a rout, though, that saw more than 30 percent wiped off the Shanghai composite value. And slowly, things have been getting back to normal. Beijing has been blaming, "malicious short sellers," at least partly, for that summer stock market meltdown. And this investigation shows that they're still looking to people they think may have been involved. But market watchers are saying that this latest move could have a negative effect by breaking this relative calm and raising fears once again among investors that there is still more government action in the pipeline. In other words, is the fear returning to the China markets. Andrew Stevens, CNN, Hong Kong.</s>QUEST: Now, we also had disappointing economic data from China itself where profits from industrial companies fell more than 4 percent in October. It was the fifth down month in a row.</s>QUEST: And mining shares were lower in Europe. The European markets, have a look at the numbers, all the major markets except the Zurich SMI which eked out a small gain.</s>QUEST: An update on some breaking news to bring you. Police in Colorado Springs are chasing a gunman on the loose either at or near a Planned Parenthood clinic.</s>QUEST: Hospital officials say at least four people have been injured. And according to the FBI, the FBI's S.W.A.T. and evidence recovery teams are now responding to the situation in Colorado Springs. It's not clear how many shooters that there are and if hostages are being held. We'll bring you more details of that when we get them, of course. We have teams on the way and covering the story.</s>QUEST: Coming up next on Quest Means Business --</s>MAGDI BATATO, HEAD OF OPERATIONS, NESTLE: I think this is unacceptable. And that's a real emotional issue.</s>QUEST: I think it's unacceptable, says the Vice President of Nestle. He's talking about the abuse of workers uncovered in the company's supply chain in Thailand. You'll hear him defend the company after the break. Its Quest Means Business.