Thank you for downloading the Bottom Line podcast. This week, Stephanie Flanders asks her panel of top executives about the impact of political instability on how and where they do business.

Hello and welcome to the bottom line. I'm Stephanie Flanders sitting in for Evan Davis. Well, businesses have been learning to live with a lot of new financial risks over the past few years, like the risk that their bank might be about to go

bust, but recent events in Egypt have reminded everyone of the threat that political instability

composed to any business. I'll ask my three guests how they cope with political volatility

and when it's okay to turn a crisis into an opportunity.

We'll also be talking about employees.

Companies always like to boast that their staff are their most valuable asset.

I'm finding out whether it's true.

Now my first guest is Tim Watkins, vice president of the European arm of the Chinese telecoms company Huawei.

Now, Tim, I think Huawei is probably one of those massive companies that no one in the UK has really heard of.

Are you much bigger than when we think you are?

Well, I think we probably are. Yes, Huawei is an enormous company, 110,000 people, focused on global telecommunications. But actually, probably everybody in the UK has used Huawei equipment. Or when you use the internet, the chances are you're using Huawei equipment unwittingly. And quite interestingly, for a Chinese company, it's owned by its employees,

which is a very unusual model. It's the infrastructure that you're providing when the way that

we connect through you is because the service providers are working with you. That's right. Yes.

Our customers are really people like BT and Vodafone and Telefonica. So we supply the mobile

infrastructure and the fixed infrastructure

that makes the internet work, basically. Of course, you know, some people would say the suspicious

people in this world would say, are you're the frontman for this rather big shady Chinese company

that's getting lots of support from the Chinese government. I mean, that's what a lot of

Americans and some British people have said about you. Well, it's, I guess, a perception, of course,

but actually we're supplying nearly 46 of the top 50 world leaders. If you look at the top 50 service

providers and operators, 46 of them have chosen Huawei to deploy their major infrastructure.

...