showed the central bank did not accept a raise rates in june. we will see how that is being digested. alix: six of the world's biggest banks will pay nearly $6 billion in five agree to plead guilty to charges tied to currency-raking. we hear from two top u.s. officials involved in this historic announcement. scarlet: burberry among retailers reporting earnings bread we will talk shopping and -- with the former ceo of with a former ceo. scarlet: good afternoon. alix: let's look at the markets. i looking at stocks -- doing a lot of nothing. it was said after the minutes came out, dull. scarlet: this is true, but at least it is a little less golden it was before the release of the

minutes be at right now, at least we have a direction. it looks like the dow has now moved 75 points from heat to trough. this marks the fourth straight day it has not reached double digits in an intraday string. alix: health care, telecom, utilities, the dividend-paying stocks, doing well. scarlet: let's look at how treasuries are doing. .ields are down 2.25%. the fed does not want to see another taper tantrum. they are concerned. alix: look at the dollar, a similar story. well, it is kind of higher. but it lost a lot of steam. you see the downdraft when the minutes came out around 2:00. along the lows. scarlet: stronger dollar you would think means lower gold, but look at gold, higher by .3%.

alix: this is the perfect fed indicator. when the minutes come out, iowa's look at gold. it is an indicator of how they will act. peter:ways look at gold gold is higher. let's look at top stories. alix: the world's biggest banks, six of them, will pay 520 billion dollars to settle claims they conspired to rig the price of foreign currency markets. four egregiously guilty in the currency case could citigroup, jp morgan, barclays, it will bank of scotland give victim america was also fined. ubs will plead guilty in scheme.-rate rigging loretta lynch assess the damage was widespread. loretta lynch: there actions inflated the banks' profit while harming callous consumers, investors, and institutions around the globe. from pension funds to major corporations, including the banks' own customers who placed their faith in the market and relied on it to produce a competitive exchange rate.

alix: the justice department says currency traders call themselves the cartel and used online chat rooms to rig exchange rates. federal reserve officials last month to not expect to raise rates in june, even though they concluded the continuation of the first quarter economic slowdown was unlikely, and that is according to minutes of late april's fomc session. also confirming that it expects the u.s. economy to return to a moderate pace of growth after its first-quarter struggles. officials are still weighing the timing of the first interest-rate increase since 2006. york's topnew financial regulator is stepping down. department of financial services superintendent bridgman laws ky will leave in late june. he plans to set up his own consulting room in new york. he took on some of the role's biggest banks, threatening to take away their u.s. traders and collecting billions of penalties. , illinois, oak brook

labor organizers and workers are protesting outside mcdonald's headquarters, pushing for 15 dollars an hour wage and a union for fast food workers. the demonstration coming ahead of the mcdonald's annual shareholder meeting, which begins tomorrow. the european company altice has agreed to buy 70% of southern linc communications and age of the company at more than $9 million. than 1.5link has more million customers in more than a dozen states. the investment firm that manages stephen cohen is bringing a new chief operating officer spirit point72 -- point72 has hired a new officer. it has been an expansion mode, adding professionals, a multi-strategy fun, and a big data research firm. pay the usra will

government 11 20 -- $11.2 million as part of a 2007 peter pan peanut butter recall over salmonella contamination. conagra will plead guilty to one misdemeanor violation of the food, drug, and cosmetic act. the plea deal is subject to court approval. thousands of car owners have overwhelmed the national highway traffic safety administration's website after they were urged to check and see if there are bags are safe after the recall of the toccata or bags in a record 34 million cars be at regulator said it may take several days before the database is fully accessible. circle and the report underscores how tight household finances are in the u.s. jpmorgan said most americans to not have enough liquid assets to withstand shots because of a drop in earnings or a big expense. this agrees cash or money market accounts that can be accessed at little to no cost. that means they would have to take on debt or tap into other acids, such as homes, cars, long-term bonds. -- they will have to tap into

other assets. alix: chris christie calls it "the ugliest damn building in the state." it is about to get a second life. 600 million muni bonds could help pay for construction. a canadian firm to cover the project is the previous developer ran out of cash. the groundbreaking for the megamall was a decade ago. scarlet: the end of an era in late-night. david letterman will bring down the current tonight on his 33 years of hosting. that is more than 6000 episodes. no word on his final guests. all cbs will say is that tonight's show before surprises. i did get a message from a bloomberg customer says that it is a lock that president obama will be at a fundraiser around six ago and they start filming around 8:00. alix: i hate to say it, president obama is not that funny. scarlet: he is pretty fighting for a president or that would be one of many surprise guest. those are the latest top

stories. alix: coming up in the next half -- scarlet: this is funny. a preview of the iowa caucus. groups inative focus des moines, iowa. six of the world's biggest things will pay 500 billion dollars, five agreed guilty to charges. we will speak to the director of enforcement, next. scarlet: target province jumped 52%. we look at the company's successful and run later in the hour. alix: back to top story. six things pleading guilty to market many relation, paying a most $6 billion. jpmorgan, citigroup, barclays, and royal bank of scotland all pleading guilty to currency rating ubs guilty to manipulating interest rates. u.s. assistant attorney general antitrusthe doj's

division spoke on bloomberg tv this morning. they discussed the technique used to find the wrongdoers. we will have that interview later in the hour. lots to talk about. there are other issues, other probes. we are at precious metals. scarlet: there's a lot more to come on this. you wonder at one point the big banks can get over this legal under hang. it is keeping investors at bay. big bang shares have rebounded quite of np or people are looking at the macro environment, the return of an interest rate increase. at this point, you're looking at hundreds of billions of dollars being put aside for these legal expenses. alix: it is a mixed stock reaction. lower.n slightly ubs slightly higher. much more to come. scarlet: we're not done yet. ♪

scarlet: welcome back. alix: julie hyman has a look at the market spirit julie: records for the s&p and the dow after we saw that reversal not right after the fed minutes. it took a little while. some volatility right after they came out during we have seen a very narrow range for the three major averages. not just today but over the past several sessions. the dow is gaining about 14 points and the sv of about 3.5 thomas about our trading and records. most ofaq gaining the the three, up more than .3%.

as we are seeing these games, one group has been doing dismally throughout the day. that is the airlines good we heard comments from the american airlines ceo about the competitiveness in the industry, emphasizing that american airlines is going to be -- insive in continuing competing with low-cost carriers. so what will that do to profits of these companies? we are seeing all of them come off, delta, american, southwest, jetblue, united, across the board in terms of declines within that industry. on the opposite end of the spectrum, cable is doing well. cablevision has consistently been the best performer in the s&p 500. that is after we had that cable deal from europe, that cross-border deal with lt's buying the seventh largest cable provider in the u.s., sudden link. now it is sparking a lot of speculation about who could be next to be targeted. a quick check on or mel, one of

the best performers today. hormel foods, that is, the maker of spam. that committee coming up with beat estimates. sales missed estimates, but the company's forecast for the year as optimistic enough for vote to be buying their shares today. spiritsank you so much scarlet: a look at top stories crossing the terminal. railroad ins lay muslim for the deadly and track crash pointed out a major problem. they say locomotives should have a second crewmember. the engineer was alone in the cab. ingress stop requiring two 1983. alix: looking for gas under three dollars a gallon, stay away from california. in los angeles, paying more than four dollars a gallon, the highest price in the country. it reduced the supply -- the reason, reduced supply because of a refer any explosion.

california is the toughest clean-air rules in the country. they do not have a lot of pipelines into the midwest. scarlet: the owner of american pharaoh has sold the breeding rights of the triple crown hopeful. in centrals a farm kentucky. no word on price, that it has been said the family that owns american pharaoh has been flooded with offers, in -- including some over $20 million. that is before the belmont stakes. him theere would make first triple crown winner since 1978. alix: what do iowa voters want out of the 2016 candidates? that is what the "with all due respect" team asked. scarlet: they did field research and hosted focus groups from each political party. tonight on the show, you will hear from the democratic foes and does focus group into tomorrow, the republican one. mark halperin joins us now.

why do focus groups? what will you learned you do not already hear from professionals? mark: you can talk to professionals and a lot of polling. the great thing about focus .roups is you get the humanity you hear from real people. their voices, word choices, and tone. we find it helpful. campaigns do focus groups all the time. media does it less often. that is why we wanted to get in the game to get a sense of what they use focus groups for and to learn more about what real people focus on. alix: what did you learn? what are real people looking at? mark: everybody knows that democrats in iowa and elsewhere are supportive of hillary clinton. we wanted to get a sense of they support her, but below that topline support, what do they think about her question what are their concerns and what do they like? is a strong, confident woman. she knows what she is doing. she is not afraid to step up.

>> i think she would probably do a pretty good job running the country. >> what did she do college as secretary of state? >> secretary of state? i really cannot name anything of the top of my head. >> she is not perfect, but she has been in the public eye for a long time and you'll have some stuff on her, but she is great policies and knows how to get stuff done. mark: that is just a sampling of the voices you heard. people like her experience, but then when you asked them to a slightly sheeted as secretary of state, they cannot. that put off a debate on whether or not that is a fair question to ask voters. at 5:00 eastern, you will hear broader discussion about what they like about her and how they feel about her e-mails being deleted and about the foundation and why it is that they are so behind hillary clinton, even though a lot of them have reservations. thesehow do you find

people? mark: we looked for democrats who said they were going to come out to the world-famous iowa caucuses, schedule now for february 1. some people expressed in advance in allegiance for hillary clinton. some were shopping around, maybe thinking about other candidates. overall, these were democrats pretty united in saying hillary clinton is our only hope right now for the white house. these are islands who lean them a credit, likely to be part of that caucus process in february. what is the distinction of how people vote in primaries versus the general election? are they reaching for a voting for their favorite candidate or are they voting not to give the other guy in? mark: these democrats, as compared to the republicans in the focus group, the democrats were very clear-eyed, almost cynical, saying we like hillary clinton and do not like some things, but we think she can win

a general election could their punk and group was thinking a lot more about who we like and who best represents values and who is the strongest to win the nomination, less focused on the general election, given they have been shut out of the white house now for two terms. scarlet: i wonder whether the average to local iowa issues matter. chris christie make comments about takes and how they are raised in the cages. does that matter to iowa voters? mark: there are some local issues in iowa. we heard from everybody out there, voters, people in journalism, and they said, you know what, islands are like everybody else in america. they care about national defense, schools, and the economy. they do do some pandering, but they're mostly trying to show their leadership body on the national issues that everybody in the country cares about. "withmake sure to watch all due respect" tonight. there will also be a republican strategist on. it should be a full packed show. scarlet: still ahead, six of the world's biggest banks will pay

almost $6 billion for currency rigging. the cftc was involved in the announcement. the director of enforcement joins us, next. ♪

scarlet: a day of reckoning for six of the world's biggest banks, which will pay him was $6 million. citigroup, j.p. morgan chase, barclays, and rbs agreed to plead guilty to two edges of conspiring to manipulate the price of u.s. dollars and euros. alix: the cftc director of enforcement joins me now from washington. thank you for joining us. we appreciate it on this huge day for banks. what was the cftc's role. currency markets are not regulated. oelman: we have jurisdiction over any commodity

in interesting commerce. we have taken a view, and i think it is supported under the law, that these benchmark ranks are commodities understate commerce. from about seven years ago, we started working on the libor investigation. since that point in time, we have brought and settled cases, 15 different cases, and collected over $4.6 billion. that includes the libor investigation, the foreign exchange benchmark many relation, and as of today, it also includes the manipulation of a less well-known is still widely used benchmark, which is also used for interest rates derivatives. scarlet: we discussed world enforcement. do you first see regulation because of this? there have been a lot of systemic changes already. one thing we note in our orders -- we settled two cases today

with barclays. barclays was not part of the november cases where we settled against five of the biggest banks in the world. although justice today had them plead guilty. at the orders go through a lot of the changes that benchmark-setting has undergone since we started investigating and bringing these cases. we are hopeful that the combination of really onerous ands and the new structure new compliance culture and mechanisms in these banks, including internal monitors, will persuade the banks that it is not in their interest, either for the reputation or in terms of making a profit, to continue to do these things. alix: where does the cftc go from here? there are possible investigations into the precious metals market. where is that? aitan: i cannot comment on investigations than me or may

not be ongoing. i can say that benchmark integrity is a very big focus for the division of enforcement. we are responsible for ensuring the integrity of the markets that we regulate. it is hard to think of anything that is more destructive more quickly of the public's faith of the integrity of the markets than this group of international bankers sitting in london conspiring to push what should be a competitive market into a direction up or down to enhance their own profits. we will continue to focus on these. alix: does that mean you are involved into an investigation into precious metals but cannot talk about it? aitan: it means that we're going to continue to be very vigilant. we have no reason to assume that these were the only three benchmarks that were manipulated . it is very important to us that

the public have confidence that the benchmarks that so many people rely on our said with integrity and not corrupted. scarlet: with libor and 2012, we saw for chen between the cftc -- we saw friction. talk about the process of doing global investigations seamlessly. you managed to resolve this fairly quickly in comparison to libor. yeah, it seems like with every iteration, there are more kitchen,y cooks in the so it is a complicated issue. you are right -- i think that each round, the different regulators, they have already formed good contacts in good working relationships with not just u.s. regulators but also with the u.k., and that helps a lot when there are multiple are working on

parallel investigations. it is a fact of life these days. makes things more congregated for us and for the banks. scarlet: thanks so much to the cftc director of enforcement. what is interesting as he mentioned the culture of the big banks. it takes a while. alix: how do you monitor these situations ongoing in banks? that was part of the press release with barclays. they will monitor what is happening. how difficult is that? i have to say goodbye to you now. coming up, a tale of two retailers. target proving turnaround efforts are paying off, while walmart's faltering at we will ask a retail veteran what is going on. ♪

[baseball crowd noise] ♪ ♪ [x1 chime] ♪ ♪ [crowd cheers] oh! i can't believe it! [cheering] hi, grandma! ♪ alix: "bloomberg markets day welcome back to the --welcome back to the "bloomberg markets day.

six of the world's biggest banks will pay to settle claims they conspired to rig the price of the foreign currency markets. them of the banks agreed to plead guilty in the currency case. citigroup, jp morgan, barclays, and world bank of scotland. bank of america was also fined. ubs will plead guilty to an interest rate rigging scheme. inflated the thanks profits while harming callous consumers, investors, and into students -- in stitutions around the globe, including the bank's on customers who place their fates in the market and relied on it to produce a competitive exchange rates. the justice department says they used online chat rooms to rig exchange rates. federal reserve officials last month did not expect to raise interest rates in june. they concluded an economic slowdown was unlikely. fomc stated in april it

expects the u.s. economy to return to a modded -- moderate state of growth. they are still weighing the timing of that first interest rate increase since 2006. out -- newty put york yours top financial regulator is stepping down. job fouren on the years and plans to set up his own consulting firm in new york. labor organizers and workers are protesting outside mcdonald's headquarters in augsburg, illinois. they are pushing for a $15 hourly wage. comingonstration is ahead of the mcdonald's annual shareholders meeting which begins tomorrow. it is the end of an era in late-night television. tonight on cbs, david letterman will bring down the curtain on

his 33 years of hosting. if you are counting, that is more than 6000 episodes. no word on his final guest. all tbs will say is that tonight's show will be full of surprises. those are your latest top stories at this hour. coming up in the next half hour of the "bloomberg markets day," spotify is entering the competitive web video business. the founder announced plans to add streaming video and podcast to its offerings. wasench telecom group buying a stake of a u.s. cable company and could lead to many more. we will learn about the company and the billionaire behind it. salesforce announcing its first-quarter earnings. worriedysts are not about a takeover. target is the latest retailer to report coming in. turnaround efforts are finally paying off.

what is target getting right? the former ceo of sacks and the national retail federation. good to see you. can we say "tarjet" instead of target? guest: "tarjet" has its mojo back. fixing the supply chain, fixing their apparel business, doing promotions. i feel good about their performance. alix: talk about this collaboration. one is the potential for target and other retailers to use it going forward. is it good? guest: it is great for the designers, it gets them in at accessible price points, h&m announced a collaboration. it says they are part of culture, they are part of pop, part of the designer world, and it is in and out. the high and brands love it

because it exposes their brand to a broader audience for a very short period of time. alix: we saw in target that capital allocation was a very important theme. do you like that when retailers do that? guest: i like it when they have a strong balance sheet, when they return value to the shareholders. target is showing it is improving its balance sheet substantially. alix: they went to invest and get better stores, better e-commerce. they only have 40% of digital sales. guest: it is a balance. they have to invest in business, and also return value to the shareholders. alix: home depot and lowes, here you have two companies in the same industry, they both have about 2000 stores. home depot has so much more price per square footage than lowes does. how does that happen? guest: home depot missed in the on the channel retailing. winners, losers, the halves,

have-nots, it is those who have been investing in the internet, looking at moving inventory from one channel to another, making the shopping experience easier, the ability to pick up in-store, that is what home depot is going to to do win. -- to do to win. of late,e's is kind but got in their 2011. is it not all retail [indiscernible] but it is an execution story? by and large is not that bad. my outlook on the second half of the year is positive or it alix: we are supposed to see this huge payback from lower gas prices this quarter, which did not happen. guest: it is gradually happening. the words from walmart were that consumers were saving more, buying groceries. i think the consumer will be shopping. the back half of the year will be stronger than the first quarter that we saw. the first quarter was hampered by the weather, the port strike.

i believe the second half of the year will be stronger. alix: what about m&a? sort of a different story, what is your outlook for that space? to seeyou will continue consolidation. m&a is part of the retail business. have a great cost base, and i think you are going to continue to see heavy m&a activity. you will see a lot from the private equity firms. alix: what are the takeout targets? guest: you are going to have a lot of companies that don't have critical mass are going to be the ones that are targets. alix: thank you so much for stopping by. the former ceo of sacks and the national retail federation. solar stocks have been all over the place this week. we want to start with green energy holding. today the company surged the most in two years, but that comes after a two-day plunge that erased 45% of its market

value. it has been a crazy ride for this stock. gordon johnson, director of metals and mining research, joins me now. hi. thanks for being here. what happened with yingli? yingli this not make enough cash to cover its interest expenses. that is a company that is insignificant trouble by definition. they have debt of about $2.3 billion and in cash, 300. they can't cover their interest expense. everybody thought yingli will go out of business, but the company had never said that. the bears like myself said, yes they will write we saw two prior big chinese solar companies go out of business, and then on friday of last week, yingli published their annual report. in that report they added a new disclosure that said, we are at risk of going out of business.

was down 8%.ock tuesday is when it really got hit. alix: where does it go from here? does this company legitimately have a leg to stand on here? guest: i don't think it is headline craziness. we cover yingli. without the backing of the chinese government, i do not think they would be, around right now. the question is is the chinese government going to keep them around now. thetech was previously largest solar company in the world and the chinese government let them go bust. given what we are looking at in china, i think yingli potentially has problems in the near term. falling 47%.stock what happened? guest: this is a company where the stock for 2014 peaked -- if you look at the fundamentals of

the company, the company sells everything they make to related parties. 2012 22014 the are saying they generated a ton of cash -- profit, but cash is only 3% of the profit. the company is posting these good numbers. everything they are selling is to the parent. it is not as efficient as a competing technology. they should not be making the sales. everyone has questioned it for the longest. what happened yesterday was effectively the chairman did not attend the annual meeting. he was asked why. he had betterte, things to do, and the stock was down 47%. this copy makes an inferior product and they sell it to their parents, they do not sell it to the open market, but it happened yesterday. we have been expecting this for a while. alix: when you look at this

phase, solar stocks have been hot recently. how do you determine those that have proven technology, a proven business model, will not go bankrupt like solyndra in the u.s., and those that don't like hanergy ? guest: it is hard to do. what hanergy makes is clearly inferior. what companies are doing right now is they are taking on a ton of debt to build projects on their owneets to sell product into. they're artificially creating demand. the question is, are they going to be able to sell these projects they are building? the market is assuming yes. there are more potential bankruptcies and similar announcements to yingli out there, and that is not factored into the stocks right now. alix: great perspective on the bearish area of the solar market. gordon johnson, director of solar metals and mining research and wolf research. coming up on the next "bloomberg market day," spotify is adding a feature to help fend off competition from apple and google. ♪

alix: welcome back to the "bloomberg market day." i'm alix steel. you look at the major averages. it has been a narrow range. julie: almost made it to a record. with 15 minutes left to go, i guess it is anybody's game.

if you look at the s&p 500 on an intraday basis, we did start to get a bump up after the minutes came out, fed minutes came out, and went back down again and then went back up and come back down again. a lot of indecision here. coming up against those record levels, it might be harder for people to justify buying and looking at the valuations as well. also take a look at what has happened to the dollar today and what we have seen there. the fed minutes playing into the dollar trade as well. the fed saying in those minutes that unlikely we will see rates go higher in june, even though that is largely in line with what most investors have been anticipating. you have seen the dollar quite volatile today. right now of a quarter of 1%. let's take a look at the treasury market as well. it has been a similar story there throughout the session. we have seen prices go higher and yields start to push lower. not a huge decline for

treasuries, but a decline nonetheless. click check in oil prices, we have an inventory of reports this morning at 10:30 that showed a larger than estimated drawdown in inventories, could we be seeing a little bit of an alleviation of the supply issue? alix, it depends on who you ask. alix: and what inventory numbers you believe. thank you, julie hyman. involving crime wave atms. discredit coring -- scoring firm fight go says thieves are information. debit card crime at bank atms almost tripled in the first quarter. president obama goes from tweeting [indiscernible] after his getting his account, he reached one million followers and five hours. that smashes the mark set by robert downey junior. he needed 24 hours to do it.

nfl commissioner roger goodell is waiting on tom brady. today in san francisco, where the league is holding its owners meeting. >> i look forward to hearing directly from tom, if there is new information, there is information that can be helpful to us in getting this right. what do you hear directly from tom on that. says no date has been set for brady's appeal to he was suspended for bama games. yesterday the patriots robert kraft agreed reluctantly to accept the nfl's punishment for the organization was fined $1 million and penalized with the loss of two draft picks. spotify is adding video to its music streaming service. the spotify ceo announced today that the world's largest subscription music service will feature video from content partners like fisa and comedy central. for more, i am joined by "bloomberg west" anchor emily

chang in san francisco. why now for spotify? emily: video is a hot thing. we have known this would be happening for a long time. theify is getting into streaming video business. don't cancel your cable package just yet. they will be offering short clips from things like comedy central, espn, things like vice, nbc. the big question is, is this a play for ad dollars? is this a play for more subscriptions? that thereadmission streaming music service is not enough to sustain the growth of this company? when of the interesting things , a ceotreaming music said none of the guys in this space, spotify, apple, pandora, have really figured this out. take a listen. >> we have not had that netflix moment where everybody gets what netflix is. and we have not had that in

music. emily: spotify trying to have its own netflix moment. the big question, can spotify compete? this puts it in direct competition with companies as big as google. facebook is making a huge play and native video, even snapchat has its own discover feature. spotify is also going to be offering some original content, a show where you see celebrities chatting over breakfast, a video series that teaches you a new dance move every day. they sort of want to be like the spotify, although like for podcasts. podcasts are having a moment now. podcasting is something that spotify really wants to own. as we have learned with other companies that have tried to do this, it is an incredibly difficult business. it is very expensive to do that right spotify most likely is not profitable. you are mentioning the competitors like apple, google.

we are expecting some other news in the next few weeks from spotify's competitors. what are we going to see? emily: the big news we are expecting is going to be coming from apple, where we are expecting apple to the lachapelle music as apple music, fully integrating its position with beats. the big question remains, can apple really make big changes in the streaming music? they had a thing called ping which did not work out too well. nobody really knows what the big problem is that apple can solve here. the streaming music business is going quite well. necessarily such a big business for the companies that are in this, and that is why we are seeing spotify trying to diversify today. alix: celebrities over breakfast? i would watch that in the five minutes i have. emily: i would totally watch that. alix: emily, thanks so much. make sure to tune in this

evening at four: 30 p.m. eastern to watch "bloomberg west." still ahead, a french billionaire is making headlines this week in the u.s. cable tv industry. we discuss who he is and why the sudden interest. ♪

alix: a european company is expanding into the u.s. cable market, agreeing to buy 70% of sudden link communications in a deal that values the company at more than $9 billion. joining me to discuss is bloomberg's media reporter, jerry smith, and cory johnson,

bloomberg editor at large. the first thought i had when i was reading all the article's yesterday and today, who is patrick draghi? jerry? think either of those names resonate much with u.s. consumers. patrick has built up a large telecom and cable business in europe. this is his first step into the u.s. cable market. he is entering the u.s. cable a lot of a time of chaos, ever since comcast's deal with time warner cable last month fell through, all the smaller companies are trying to jockey for position. charter is interested in buying time warner cable. we also reported that there is a bid for time warner cable. from a regulatory standpoint, who has the better case? i'll tease or charter?

-- altice or charter? cory: inasmuch as the fcc or ftc is concerned about the control over content of larger cable operations -- even the time warner comcast deal did not have a geographic overlap but it would have given one company a big say in what kind of content gets out there to most cable subscribers in the world released in this country. altice does not have that problem exactly in the u.s. u.s. regulators are having a hard time making the case that this one company would have too much control over content in the u.s. it is also unclear what the new limits are to these rules. i thinkelieved, and comcast and time warner believed, because there was not a lot of geographic overlap, the ftc and fcc would not oppose their deal. it became known over time that the problem wasn't just a geographic control over market, the was below the national market of what the content was

contentthe bidders of would be. now we don't really know what the threshold is from the ftc in particular and the department of justice, so what would be considered a monopoly. alix: that is the question. when charter first line by time warner, it was 150 a share, with reports that he could be as high as $190 a share. in your reporting, what do the financials look like for altice versus charter? charte isr interested in buying time warner cable. now that there is a potential second bidder involved, that could increase the amount of money the charter has to plate -- pay time warner cable if they want to do a deal. it's very interesting because right now the u.s. cable market is not a market that is really growing. the number of people signing up for cable tv is starting to decline. more people are signing up for

internet. ftcs not clear with all the rules such as net neutrality rules whether they can increase the amount that they charge for broadband. now you have this french company entering the u.s. market some analysts are saying this is not really make sense. why are they entering this market that really does not have much opportunity for growth, other than potentially buying some of these smaller cable companies? alix: the plot thickens when it comes to the cable drama. thanks so much. gerry smith and cory johnson. coming up on "bloomberg market day," we are minutes away from the close of u.s. trading. we will give you the final numbers straight the s&p trading relatively flat. ♪

york we aren new moments away from the closing bell. this is "bloomberg market data cow i'm alix steel.

-- market day." i'm alix steel. alix: you have the dow, snapping us -- snapping winning streak, finishing in negative territory, the s&p falling for a second day. a new record high before pulling back, the nasdaq seems to be eking out a win on the fifth day of bouncing between gains and losses. no supplies, telecom is one of the sectors leading the s&p higher today. for more on the market let's go david. and guys, welcome. michael called today dull. that's choosing between doing a little in doing nothing.