go deep at all on the r&d side. we do not want to affect the growth of these companies. so what we took out in r&d is truly where there is duplication . and we will fix that. andrew: the performance material business from dupont is a natural fit for us on both the inputs, low-cost feedstocks, and we can bring it where it was not there before. we now have all the layers of a packaging film for medical safety where the businesses are together. countl see ahead reduction in the back offices. ask, have i have to either of you spoken to the department of justice yet? david: no, we have not, but our legal teams have been coming this, and as big as our two de anies are, there is very minimis overlap. we sell into the same markets and they will be picking up some of our oil, but the actual products do not overlap hardly

at all in these two companies. when you do the math and look at everything, we don't have a concern. andrew: think about it as adjacencies. area, we don'tag anticipate issues, but we will go through the regulatory filings as normal. david: whether the united states or europe, will they be looking at it as one company or will those be done simultaneously? hard to answer, but they will take into account that it will be broken up into three businesses. stephanie: agriculture is a key part of this deal. we have got to ask about competition. how will global agriculture change, when you think about china and the strength they have? a government-controlled entity has taken aggressive position good i'm referring to china.

that is one of the beauties of putting these two ag businesses together. andrew and i have said publicly that will be consolidation in this space. have the first-mover advantage. we know for sure we are going to be one of the big leading players in the ag that was very important to us. when we have by putting these together, we have the seaside and the strength of the trade side of doubt and leveraging that through the sales channel is really going to create some great opportunities. it is really nice balance between the businesses. in the breadth we will be able to offer our customers is very significant. you are fairly confident

about the regulatory approval and it will take some time, and i went through this when disney but abc, there's the natural tendency for companies to get fo frozen in place. what specific actions when you take to make sure your companies are going full force? edward: i have been through this before. it is a great question because you do have to be concerned about that. we did quite a few things. to me just say once you get merge and they know there are going to be three companies, the management teams get very excited. i know there will be a leader in industry in a business that will be together. they will have a chance to have the secret andrew and i have it is very motivating for them to perform as they get into the spot. in these deals you have to put retention programs in place. the separation is hard to do while you are still running your

company. you need to motivate people extra to do that. they are doing double duty to get you there. andrew: you are right, we have spent an awful lot of time on that. 80%, 90% of our conversation is your question, david. ed'socus on materials and , we have divided our biggest so that it is together for focused. blow us from the same. -- below us, the same. below them, the same. we have to operate, integrate, and split. we have to put teams in place to be focused on those and be incentivized. stephanie: those people are worried about cuts. let's talk about cost synergies. what is going to get pulled out of r&d, and why you need to have dual headquarters in michigan and delaware? andrew: because of the r&d point. edward: r&d will be where

there is duplication and it is actually a small number in the scheme of the 3 billion number, literally down in the 10% range. when you look at the combined million.and 2.8 we are not taking out r&d working on a project where there is not. there are going to be three companies at the other end of this, and the materials dow, the other side is to punt. -- is dupont. we know that is a future destination. edward: it is the same thing. we halve the hole corporate infrastructure, which, by the way, they are downsizing.

we are in bloomington and will have to lean on that as we do these other two companies. i will say, andrew climbed from flint. -- andrew, i am from flint. not a bad place to be. very busy day for you gentlemen good time for "bloomberg markets." for that we go to betty liu. betty: david, stephanie, thank you very much for they are speaking to andrew liveris and edward breen who will join for this new company. in the making. i want to bring in our global chemicals analyst, who joins us from princeton, along with brooks sutherland. brook, why don't we start with you? you heard andrew -- talk about how this combination is going to be synergistic, going to --

ebitda-friendly. was this a conversation that should have been done earlier? brooke: i think it is a very logical combination. that havethings changed but it makes now a good time to look at doing this. you had the ceo shakeup t. it seems like coming in would be a catalyst for the discussions to get ramped up again. there are a lot of things that came together they just seem like now is the right time. it is the year of the megadeal. and now we see this in industrials. ed wereandrew and cautious and confident.

are there going to be big regulatory challenges here? these are the top two chemical makers. jason: this seems there would be a lot of overlap with the biggest companies coming together but over the years these firms have restructured and refocused. these portfolios are supplemented. there is some intrigue in the agricultural sciences business. now we have the biggest seat and crop chemicals business. there is still a lot of competition there. you get into a political area and the farmers are clearly watching very closely held the market power will play out once there is more opportunities to bundle. in general, the migratory -- regulatory and antitrust risk is pretty low. and this being a good moment in time with ed coming in is very accurate. back when we had the proxy

battle, the former ceo resisted any change the portfolio and mr. breen has been very amicable. betty: he only came on board in november so he came on board to strike some sort of deal. nelson peltz was at the forefront of the dupont shareholder and they just came out with a statement saying -- it is a long semen so i will not read the whole thing could essentially, they fully support this transformative transactions. there were approach, they say, i du pont and down to sign -- by dupont and dow to sign agreements.ity nelson is certainly happy because he has made quite a bit of money from this, as well as other activist shareholders. brooke: this is really the dream

of an activist. you get more scale and more focus of the same time. you are really getting the best of both worlds doing this. it seems like this is definitely something the activists as well as other shareholders are going to like. is it unusual they were brought in so intimately in this transaction? brooke: it was a smart move on dupont's part. you have the proxy fight which got a little vicious. betty: and led to the departure of ellen kullman. just making sure they were on board probably didn't hurt them. you have more expertise to do this. it doesn't make sense what they are doing. it didn't hurt them. betty: he did it. jason, what about pressure on other companies? jason: there's a couple of levels of pressure in the agricultural space. you have a lot of heated merger and m&a activity.

china has made a bid that was rejected. a lot of activity there. a lot of pressure on the major local conglomerates. this is a philosophy change in a way where the u.s. chemical firms are looking at major firms overseas, a $90 billion revenue company, and saying that rather than these massive conglomerates , we are going to go at this whole thing in a leaner and more logical way. there will be pressure to spread the focus. and so you probably see a lot of dealmaking in the specialty forical space with a mecca -- the megafirms as well. betty: thank you guys for joining me. for more commentary for dfly, gadf on your

bloomberg terminal. lots of news related to the stock markets. matt: dow jones newswire put up headlines suggesting that china may devalue its currency by --sening the peg, taking the pegging the yuan instead of to the dollar loan, to a basket of currencies. it looks like equity investors are little wary of that right now. not huge moves, but a drop of 1% in change across the board. you can see the dow jones industrial average down 200 points. it is not so much the price action as the size. if you take a look at my volumel, this shows you at any point in time compared to that point the last 20 days. we have treated double the amount of telecom stocks in the 20-day average.

by the way, those are on opposite ends of the spectrum. materials are the biggest loser as far as energy groups. telecoms are the biggest gainers. take a look at crude oil, another reason for declined today. over the last five trading days, .hat to expect you see crude just drop all of a sudden. we have moved down to a 35 handle. .ery important to note take a look at natural gas, another milestone there as well. it has fallen below two dollars for the first time since april 2012. it is on the slick the bottom has fallen out -- almost like the bottom has fallen out. betty: people are racing to safety. matt: i will show you in a

second bonds are the first thing you think of. 10-year, 217, down to 215 a little bit earlier. this is true across the government debt market. you are seeing buying that pushes the yield down. it is considered a safe haven at times like this. jump, but a huge these kinds of headlines, even if they are not yet verified, investors are wary of these things. betty: seems like they're just nervous. matt: we are getting close to the expected rate hike next week. last time we were looking for a rate hike, china came into the picture and it didn't happen. will they shake it up again? betty: thank you so much, matt miller other markets desk. stay with us. ♪

betty: good morning, and welcome back to "bloomberg markets." alibaba has officially entered into an agreement to acquire the "south china morning post" and other media. rumors of the acquisition have been swirling for months. emily chang addressed the rumors with the alibaba ceo with jack ma, in an interview last month. ack: we need media to help our small and medium-sized companies and to promote, and power advertisement dollars, huge. media can definitely, using our status, we can tell the economy in an accurate way. emily: so are you going to buy

the "south china morning post"? jack: i did not say that . i'm watching companies know. betty: something was brewing, clearly. joining us is cory johnson. cory: maybe she gave him the idea. betty: jeff bezos has "the washington post" and jack ma has "south china morning post." cory: jeff bezos has "the washington post," not amazon. he has not emerged those businesses together. he has pushed "opposed" to do more online -- push "the post" to do more online. their app is fantastic. what is interesting here is how this business might work, this newspaper business, my work with what alibaba is doing to help

businesses sell stuff. betty: they have gone into several media. and alibabaku, movie studio. they have some media assets they are building up. cory: to me it is kind of puzzling what they are trying to do, how they measure news helping small businesses. i understand that this play boxer sandbox, it is to try to find new ways to innovate around journalism and make good journalism available to lots of people. betty: what would be the logical explanation, then? cory: there is a lot of things that alibaba has done since going public that are just weird. going back and buying back shares when the results were answer good for the company -- i would put this in the company -- category of you better proved to me this will work. not the first time a billionaire has gone on and bought a media asset.

it is not been doing it could that is why shareholders might look askew at this. betty: cory johnson, bloomberg editor at large. much more in the next half hour. the plan to make the most fuel-efficient cars out there. that is coming up. ♪

betty: welcome back to "bloomberg markets" i'm betty liu. stocks are selling office we close our trading. matt miller with how the etf markets have been holding up. matt: thanks very much.

mlpts. about a wild ride. a variety of rafters. here to discuss that is our eta analyst. talk to me about what we have seen happening in oil this week. that is why we are focusing on mlp's. have a seriouss problem because they have been hit from both sides. betty: these are master limited partnership with talking about, different tax treatment. eric: these are companies that have to pass on 90% of the income. the etf's come along and wrap up a bunch of them -- betty: you can buy direct -- matt: you can buy directly into mlp's.

eric: they come and wrap them up. of about 6-10%. this was a big fat pitch, one adviser told me, because i can get a big deal and not take on that much risk. this is the downside to that from this environment. is down 31%. no open and fund -- it is structured as a c corporation. a tax of 34%. does, youhe index will fall short of it. that has been a real issue with the mlp's. matt: there is one from jpmorgan that is etn. eric: they are just like any other stock you may buy. the issue with those is you don't know what they hold. they're basicallyif you look at them, they have credit risk.

actually lose your money. people like that because of the tax treatment. people normally say that you go to amlp for the yield but if you want total return you go to the stomachs a credit risk. they can 32% of all the assets. the tax issue is a major driver of those assets. matt: first trust northern american energy infrastructure, this combination of the 2 -- is this the michael corleone, one is sonny, one is fredo? eric: love "the godfather was quick reference. the other 75% will be basically companies that are related to mlp's, energy companies. dragill not have the tax

in there as well. this is the largest actively managed equity etf at 800 million. i don't know if that says more about people's hunger for this kind of exposure or how hard it is for active equity etf's. matt: always good to see you because i love hearing about etf's and because we know it is friday. etf friday, betty. betty: still ahead on bloomberg television, a big week ahead with the possible fed liftoff. take a look at the terminal function. wirp. traders are calling for a 74% chance of a right move. ♪

live from bloomberg world headquarters in midtown manhattan, i am betty liu. has more from the

news desk. david: crying gases playing beat the clock with the federal budget. the senate has agreed to extend the deadline for next thursday and the house is excited to do the same the next day. new york state has won the latest round in the fight against fantasy sports sites. and draft king's have to shut down their new york operations for now. keep operating while fighting an attempt to declare them illegal under state gambling laws. tomorrow in saudi arabia women will vote and run for office for the first time. winner is still not allowed to drive and must get permission from a male relative to travel alone overseas. british by mr. david cameron has been putting off a decision since 2012. now you will not decide whether to add another runway to heathrow airport until next year. he says more time is needed for environmental study. the british chamber of commerce

calls the delay gutless. prosecutors say today that criminal investigation is over, ruling out corporate prosecution of rupert murdoch's british newspapers and charges against individuals including former cnn host piers morgan. that is a look at our "first look" news. you can get more 24 hours a day from bloomberg.com. thank you, david garrard the news desk. we are five days with the most anticipated fed decision in years. we can safely say that i not go into hyperbole. if you take a look at my terminal here now -- guys, if you could pull that up -- hang on one second -- all right, i will get that going in a moment. basically, 74% of traders believe that we are going to see frederick -- frederick hiked by next week. janet yellen and the government

has emphasized a gradual raise. we are joined by bloomberg economics editor mike mckee. we have a handful of pieces of data that could affect possibly this decision or not. mike: no, the fed in the it is going to, happen barring any huge event between now and next wednesday. there is no way for them to pull the markets back and they would not want a market interruption. we will not see anything that would change their mind. consumer prices next week and consumer prices are going to start going up a little bit because we are seeing some of the effects of the oil price drop last year at this time fall out of the calculation. we thought this would carry through into next year, and the fed's calculation has been that consumer prices are going to start rising because of this and oil prices are going back down again. prices, theyoil are looking at the core numbers and hopefully those will start to go up as well. that is the forecast.

wirp functionmy on the terminal so if you want to show that now, 74% of traders think. it is not unanimous. we were unanimous going into the ecb decision. e: it is not a calculation on whether they can raise interest rates, it is whether they can as far as they think. the formula assumes that we will go from where we are, which is about a 13 basis point -- we're not at zero. you have 70% of the people thinking that will happen. at 30 basis points or something like that, you get much closer to 100%. betty: i think that is another hour-long show.

mike: no question that the fed is going to raise rates. betty: housing data is out before the fed decision. mike: housing starts, the interesting thing is not so much that number. when we raise rates, the mortgage rates will go up a little bit. to the rush out and buy houses ahead of rates or do they say we do not believe they are going up very fast? betty: economics editor mike mckee, you will be raising the death really busy -- you will be really busy. consumers are getting into the shopping spirit ahead of next week's fed meeting. the commerce department this morning reported november retail sales climbed the most informants. months.ast four expect consumer spending to get even stronger with a 2% rise in dollar sales from last year.

when we see the retail sales numbers, they're still quite small. are we finally starting to see that the lower gas prices -- i'm waiting -- is it finally going through? >> it takes time. received the consumer who continues to have a view of a positive economic outlook, just waiting on consumers. there is a level of uncertainty that continues to permeate the consumer mindset. that is reflected in the retail sales data. most recent number is a positive number, but we cannot move forward and say we are out of the dark. interestingly, you still have over 50% of consumers who say we are in a recession. nearly five and a half years out -- betty: 50% say we are still in a recession. james: a lot of uncertainty flowing to the consumer landscape. betty: do you think they might look at what is going on this last week -- the stock market is .p and crashing 200 points will they look at that and will

that affect -- james: many consumers will internalize it and see gas prices -- they will focus on is the labor market and wage growth. as we start to see which growth improve, that is what consumers are focused on, the day to day. you have 40% of consumers living paycheck to paycheck. the reality of the consumer landscape continues to be this level of uncertainty, and we have to start to see this rising tide affect all ships. betty: no quickly on the holiday sales, what do you expect is going to be the big winner? james: fascinating how holidays change. no longer just thanks giving to the end of the year. what we are expecting to see his growth in the range around 2%, driven by the next level of consumer spending. multicultural and millennial consumers who are having children and toys are looking to be very positive this year. they are waiting. you have to -- you have the

procrastinators out there in the next two weeks will be really important. betty: james russo on the shopping season and retail in general. new signs that the poster session run up in rent may begin to cool down. of avember, the rate vacant manhattan apartments rose nearly 2.9%, the highest in more than nine years. a real estate appraiser crunched the data. joining us is the president and jonathan miller. jonathan, we were just talking about the housing data with mike mckee. before we drill down into manhattan, are you nervous at all with the fed rate hike? .onathan: not really rates have been at such a low level for a long time. in certain markets, like in new york city, 50% of the buyers are cash anyway. i don't see it as a big effect. betty: is that in the luxury segment? jonathan: as you move from low

to high, the probability of the cash buyer greatly increases. the rate increases going to be more of an impact to the low and .iddle end of the market we are seeing the impact already nationally. betty: you don't see this as a significant impact on the housing market? jonathan: i don't. in many ways in the midrange view, i see it as a good thing. when rates are rising in three, the economy is improving. soft handoff in being addicted to low rates and wage growth and improved employment. that translates into demand in housing. what is going on in manhattan? jonathan: what we've been seeing in 46 of the last 52 months, we have been seeing rents rise. skirting and hitting records, not just manhattan and brooklyn.

economy, robust local record employment growth. on top of it, tight credit conditions. betty: still tight. jonathan: very tight. tipping first time would be rental -- fires into the rental market. buyers into the rental market. it is lending traditions right now. not aspiring to get back into the housing bubble by any means. very irrational -- the lenders are still under siege, belatedly so, from doj, department of beta -- the fines being the fines being paid out. the lenders are skittish about lending and looking or reasons

not to land. betty: is this a danger sign? this is a danger sign in new york city? jonathan: no, i think it is a good thing. we have what is developed into basically and affordability crisis, whether talking about renting or purchasing, housing. a lot of that has to do with tight credit conditions keeping sales inventory of the market, the existing home sales data. betty: prices are going up and up and up. jonathan: a smaller subset of people active in the market. betty: they are just bidding each other off. rents.n: same thing with cities can't grow if you create jobs and incoming future employees can't afford to live there. rapid seeing all this rent growth but at the same time, in the last three or four months, starting to see vacancy pick up and also seeing landlord concessions.

landlords, in order to protect level,ht level -- rent they're paying brokerage commissions on an increasing basis. it is not that rents are going to fall anytime soon. it is that the pace of growth is expected to ease a bit. consumers have nowhere else to go. betty: they need to make it more affordable. jonathan: we are getting this point where affordability -- it has been a problem but now it is extreme. betty: bottom line, you don't see that affecting the property prices. jonathan: in many ways, the markets compete with each other. there is ahase side, disparity between the luxury market and everybody else. market, -- luxury market, plenty of supply. everybody else, chronically low inventory and rising prices. not a great thing. betty: great to have you, jonathan miller, to tie all of

this together. we are counting down to fed a day. special coverage of the highly anticipated fed decision on sitomer 16. -- december 16. that comes at 2:00 p.m. sharp. you have special guests and deep, deep analysis. ♪

betty: welcome back. this is "bloomberg markets." i am betty liu. mark barton is seeing the european stock decline. my favorite color is not the favorite for the bulls today. mark: unless you are in green. iurth day of the clients can tell you what, betty, -- fourth

day of declines and i tell you what, betty, portion prevails. 70% of the revenue comes from south africa. iran plunging to a record low for a second day. anglo american falling today. resuming the decline after a two-day respite. the next is down by 9% -- the index is down by 9%, the worst drop since july, betty. the euro rising for the second consecutive week after the ecb failed to bring out the grand bazooka. the bond market is interesting, too. stocks are falling, yields are falling as well. german 10-year yield, rose by 22 basis points. this week down by 11 basis points. flight to safety, as it is known. betty: especially with the charts which i know touch upon

as much as these points. for a look at the u.s. markets, i want to bring in abigail doolittle, with the latest live from the nasdaq. you are starting with jetblue. abigail: even when crude oil is on pace for its worst weekly decline since 2008, shares of jetblue are trading lower. usually an airline trade higher on lower oil, but today, he says they expect fourth-quarter -- the company says they expect the fourth quarter to fall year-over-year. the company says it has been negatively affected by the timing of year-end holidays among other measures. and linesnd the handling on your the basis. this average has held that support beautifully over the monday, itn black

will be important to watch on the close with the stock does around the level of support . cars, from airlines to last night fortinet's of 4.5 le dollar investment -- ford announced a $4.5 billion investment in electric vehicles. here's the ceo on why the company is making this investment. where gas an era prices are low, fuel economy is a bigger for customers. plus, they have long memories and i know prices can go up. our view longer-term is that the price of oil will go up and we want to be prepared for that. we want to be prepared for customer demand. at the same time, the second is a ration is regulatory -- same consideration is the regulatory framework. betty: joining us is matt miller, who conducted the interview. how significant is this going to be for ford? matt: $4.5 billion is a heck of

a lot of money. considering they spent less than a billion dollars to design the lincoln continental, this is serious. they only are the second-biggest electricand seller of cars in the u.s. it is no small business for ford . the fascinating thing about this company is they have always tried to be on the cutting edge of mobility and technology. at least partially because bill ford is so fascinated by technology and what the future holds for his company that he nudged theently executive board in that direction. they have a big office in silicon valley. what is cool as they have these great sharing away from electric -- ride-sharing, aside from electric hybrids, the ri de-sharing programs their starting up, essentially taking on uber in this market.

ford has a five early dollars market cap and the cars. -- $5 billion market cap and the cars could the old prison -- the algorithm is pretty easy to rip off. they will not need drivers anymore because the cars will be driving themselves. mark fields told me previously that they will have fully economist self driving car by 2020, -- fully autonomous self driving car by 2020, which isn't that far off. why doesn't a carmaker take over the market? betty: it makes perfect sense. you asked mark feels about driving value. let's listen to what he said about that. mark: we think we're focusing on those things that drive the value and evaluation of the county, which is a run growing revenues and expanding our operating margins and making sure that we have a healthy dividend. those other things we're focusing on.

when we get recognized for that -- we are not running the business just did juice the stock price. we are running a healthy, growing enterprise. betty: was that like a dig at tesla and maybe at some of these tech companies? matt: the reason i ask is that ford has been doing a great job building sustainable growth, negotiating a good contract with the uaw, building quality products and selling them in record numbers. yet the stock price has just languished. companies like tesla have soaring stock -- betty: what is that? -- why is that? matt: i don't know. that is why i asked mark. he said they are doing what they do best and hope wall street recognizes that. betty: matt miller, auto guru. you are auto everything.

more on "bloomberg markets."

betty: so here is a question. what does former bank of england mervyn king and the former president of the bank of chile have in common? memoirose ben bernanke's of the financial crisis as their best book of 2015. another book favored by leaders surveyed by bloomberg's "supercasting." tetlo joinshilip us from philadelphia. ck your book was very popular among the biggest brains in business. tell us about the size of forecasting. philip: the project described in sponsored by the intelligence community.

several thousand forecasters participated. two percent were those we designated super forecasters come meaning they did the best job of assigning realistic abilities to -- realistic probabilities to what the intelligence community care about. betty: you mention in your book -- we have people like this all the time, who come on television and make forecasts. in your book you detail how that might actually be a detriment to the whole arc of forecasting. it can be. when you are embedded in a blame game culture, whether it is washington, d.c., or corporate culture, nobody wants to be caught on the wrong side of maybe. say distinct possibility, you are safe no matter what happens. if it happens, you can say, look i told you, distinct possibility. if it doesn't happen, you can just say "i just said it was

possible." betty: hedge yourself either way. what are theion -- super forecasters saying about the fed decision? philip: fairly close to the consensus, high 90's. betty: high 90's? philip: well, yes, 97, 90 8%. there in mind it is very technical question about how much the fed is going to increase. the question they are aspiring to is an increase, so any increase is going to count. i think as a correspondent mike mckee was explaining earlier, this is a highly technical area. it is indeed. maybe one that isn't quite as technical is the presidential race. what are the super forecasters saying about who is going to win the presidential race? philip: about 64% hillary. ytty: is that surprising to ou?

philip: not too far off from where the prediction markets, the best poll aggregators are. a little more extreme than they are. the key thing to remember here is you can only set the accuracy probability judgments across many questions. you because somebody -- if have a perfect forecasting system that says something is that think being predicted is not going to happen 25% of the time. you can't throw it out as soon as something doesn't happen. you have throughout a well-tolerated system very quickly. betty: philip, thank you very much, joining us from philadelphia. much more ahead on "bloomberg markets

to "bloombergme markets." ♪

betty: from new york, good morning. here is what we are watching. activist investors get their way after dow chemical and dupont complete a record-breaking merger. the company will then split up into three. oil, seven year itch. a new forecast says the glut will not be going away. donald trump goes social. see how the republican front-runner has become a master of new media. we will talk with the editor of linkedin. we are about half an hour into the trading session. let's head to matt miller with the latest on the selloff we are seeing inequities. matt: not going to be a good week. if you're long, it will be a depressing weekend. major averages right now. we are down about 236 points on the dow. getting back towards session lows.

not there yet but heading that direction. off one and one third percent. downhe week the s&p is about 3%. 3.2%. this makes it the worst week in at least a month. i have got to look back but definitely not a good week. one of the main reasons is crude. now $36allen below $37, and we are seeing a $35 handle on it. we were over $40 on friday. opec said we don't want to put her production ceiling. we want to reduce as much oil as we can. they are at a three-year high. oil has come tumbling down. natural gas coming down in sympathy. take a look at it behind me. up -- all almost 2%. below two dollars. for the first time in over three years.

april 2012 the last time we saw that. stocks are reacting to this. all the groups on the s&p are down. energy and materials are the biggest losers. they are going to the relative safety of government debt. the 10 year is up and the yield is coming down. i thought touched to 15 earlier. and they are going into gold as well. maybe a better place when you are great about risk. the dollar coming off a little bit right now but gold is still up. the name of the game right now is really risk off. breaking headlines coming across from south africa. president zuma says he will maintain a prudent fiscal position. investors clearly do not believe him. they have sold off the debt like it's nobody's business. has shot- and the rand down against the dollar.

after the firing of the finance minister. betty: he technically was the cfo. raising these concerns about the reform continuing in south africa. thank you so much matt miller. let's check in on the bloomberg news this morning. courtney? congress beat the clock with the budget. the government spending authority ends at midnight. the senate agreed to extend the deadline to next thursday. the house expected to do the same today. negotiators are trying to come up with a bill that would extend a series of tax breaks. republicans are now discussing the possibility of a contested presidential convention next summer. members of the republican establishment say they would be forced to contest donald trump's nomination on the floor if you get the number of delegates to become the nominee. party officials discuss the

issue at a dinner on monday night. the york state has won the latest round in the fight against fantasy sports sites. fanduel and draft gains have shut down the new york operations for now. a judge ruled they cannot keep operating well the state is trying to shut them down for good. the attorney general says the fantasy sports site break state gambling laws. the climate change talks in paris will run into overtime. sayse's foreign minister he will present a final draft of the agreement tomorrow instead of today when the conference was scheduled to end. negotiators for trendy overcome disagreements on who will pay for fighting for climate change and shifting to clean energy. more than four years after the revelations of tabloid phone hacking shop britain, prosecutors say the criminal investigation is over. that rules out corporate prosecution of rupert murdoch. also off the hook as individuals including former cnn host piers morgan.

that is a look at the first news right now. you can get more on these and other breaking stories 24 hours a day at the new bloomberg.com. on courtney donohoe. betty: thank you. let's get back to the big corporate story. the $130 billion dow-dupont merger. both companies moving lower today. go appeared on "bloomberg this morning. we haveof our companies no strategically fit together. that ouro happened stocks were basically trading on top of each other from a market cap standpoint. we could do a very tax efficient transaction to our shareholders by merging first, capturing all the synergies, and then doing a three-way split up. it's very efficient from that standpoint. what ended up happening is we do not just create the world leading ag company out of this.

we get to create a specialty company with high growth businesses in it. and andrew with the dell business gets the parts of dupont that always hit with his business. we really strategically created three of the kind of person -- perfect platforms that fit together and all the synergies on top of it. it was an incredible opportunity for both our companies. stephanie: where did the deal come from? did you bring it up to the board urgent -- or did it come from activist investors? >> the dupont board was looking at this and andrew said this publicly many times, they even looking at this for a long time. our board was looking at studying so we reversed on the topic when i took over as ceo. andrew called me my first day on the job. couldn't you wait a couple days? i got together literally that sunday and spent

the afternoon together and started laying out his thoughts, my thoughts. we got to the point of doing the three-way split. we both knew in our ends of the boards that there was a lot of industrial logic to this. it took the right to people to get -- two people to get together and make it happen. it took to have the right people in place to get the deal done. the industrial logic was so powerful to dow. the coincidence that we are here this week announcing not just this deal but also with the dow corning deal. i cannot pull up that coincidence. no one could. . this is for all shareholders stephanie: no doubt it is great for shareholders, but how involved were the activists? we are talking about coincidence in timing. december 13 is the date when it's a b public again and speak

out of the company. >> as i just said, we settled last year. you're right about the standstill. there is no magic to focus off three days. this deal made sense for 10 years, five years, three years, three months and the deal is being done. our board which includes two nominees from third point has voted unanimously on this deal. it's a game changer. huge value for shareholders. as your point, i brought them in two or three weeks ago. they signed an nda. they are extreme supportive of this deal and feel the weight of we do that this was by far the most value creating opportunity for dupont shareholders. ceo andhat was dow dupont ceo this morning. let's talk about the nuts and

bolts of this deal. robert is the head of global m&a at jones day. he joins us on the phone. bob, we thought it would be the end of the megamerger and it comes back here with this deal. what do you make of this? bob: we've spoken about this before. m&a used to be about getting bigger and more profitable through synergize asian -- synergization. what is going on now is the company trying to get better, not just bigger. interestingry manifestation of that because it rgingmbining and then de-me into three different pieces. it reflects what is going on on wall street which is proper allocation in capital in a different -- difficult growth environment.

it is the best manifestation of the year of what i think has been going on all year. i think it will continue into 2016. true that it's interesting. why would they need to do that? by with a combined first before the breakup? is that thesumption three separate companies would be better in putting these different pieces in different pockets than they could if they individually split up. it would be more efficient and i think the number i heard this morning is $3 billion of synergies upfront with another one billion down the line. that's a lot of value if you capitalize that number. amount, tremendous amount of shareholder value that gets created. who lookedon peltz like the loser this year when he lost that proxy fight to ellen

kullman. winnerow cannot the big both the reputation but also in money with this merger. i want to play for what nelson told us earlier this year, right after he lost that proxy fight. >> we want to move forward. we want the company to do well. i think the fact is that everybody understands the real numbers at dupont. everybody understands the company has got to do the right thing going forward. do,.ly, if they we will applaud them betty: what you make of his role? bob: i am not involved in the deal so i don't know the behind-the-scenes manifestation of this. there is no question that companies and boards listen to make shareholders. what is no question that the message of most activists

to which does pertain capital efficiency and capital allocation, is in the boardroom. i am not going to declare winners and losers. that's for other people to do. obviously he did just fine. betty: exactly. today is a good day for him. you get to spend the weekend with this under his cap. quickly, why do you think both stocks are down right now? bob: there is a big downdraft in the market in terms of all sorts of things. most of which having to do with commodities. commodities are the key part of both of these companies businesses. i don't know. maybe the market got a little ahead of itself. don't measure this deal based on what happens the morning after. betty: good to talk with you. much more ahead. oil prices sliding to his lowest

levels in seven years. crude off 3% today. how much lower can they go? we will look at the commodities markets. we will be back. ♪

♪ good morning and welcome back. i want to quickly tossed a matt miller. matt: mark recep been having a rough time of it today to say the least. really for the entire week. ligety indexes. the s&p down 1.3%. the dow jones down. not at session mostly getting near to there. the nasdaq down about 1.4%. cigna star corp. is having its

best day since 2009. earnings and revenues that top analyst estimates. we do set -- see that flying high if you pardon the pun. other big movers we were following today. sun edison is one of them. here behind me. this is the worst performing solar stock of the year. for the last couple of days it has been coming up as other solar stocks have been moving down as it renegotiate a purchase and get to be contract up in canada. i want to take a look at corning. it's been one of the best-performing stocks of the day. one of the highest gainers in the s&p index because of this dow-dupont tie up. dow had to buy out the rest of its stake in dow corning. it makes a number of specialty chemicals. betty: thank you so much at the

markets desk. no topic is so dominated the political headlines as donald trump and his call to ban muslims from entering the u.s. the backlash. is spilling out on social media everybody has something to say about trump. " innounced on twitter, have decided to postpone my trip to israel and reschedule my meeting with benjamin netanyahu at a later date after i become president of the u.s." i want to bring in dan roth from linkedin. you deal a lot with these big egos. [laughter] i'm just joking. you deal with these influencers. trump is not on linkedin. i'm curious if he is a hot trending topic. dan: people are talking a for sure. they are talking about how he is doing this while maintaining a brand. he is all brand. when you stated trump hotel, he

just puts his name on it. how you maintain having this big personality? there is a lot of discussion about ceos as talking about things they would not have talked about before. it was always like a candidate or mark benioff said there is a new political party and it is the ceo. they feel accountable talking this way but not -- trump takes it to the extreme. a whole other level. betty: he has become the teacher of this in many ways for others. dan:. i'm not sure if it is teacher or some thing to avoid betty: your platform is helping some of these ceos build their own brands and become influencers. dan: what we're seeing is there are people who have -- you have never heard of before that are building brands for themselves by explaining what they think and having a strong point of view. we just announced the top voices with the top writers of 2015.

there is an er doctor in indianapolis writing about what his hospital might not be prepared for a major flu epidemic. we're ready for terrorism, i don't know we're ready for the flu. it's an incredible people behind-the-scenes. somebody in accounting. -- talkingt topping about white accounting firms need to be followed up. these are people who otherwise would not have a platform. betty: and clearly they are writing very intriguing articles which are getting a lot of eyeballs. there are some famous names that you have on your platform that a lot of people follow. richard branson wright a lot. he gets -- writes a lot. dan: everybody wants to be like richard branson. incredibly successful company and having a great time and living on their island -- nekker island. but other people like mohamed el-erian.

he does phenomenally well. i think a lot of people who cannot -- can help explain the world. professionals that you would want to learn from. betty: with richard branson, what is it that really hits home for the reader? dan: for him they want work life and balance. he will explain in his early years how we don't with the work life balance. he talked about what success looks like to him. he talks a lot about the environment. because of these topics about how he manages to what he believes in. he is very anti-drug laws. he talked about why does the to be performed. he is built of the following that knows his voice and will follow him wherever he wants to take them. betty: there is also -- she was one of the first to realize the importance of exposing problems. by saying i am not perfect.

we definitely see the writers were more successful are the ones that do not promise to have all the answers. a lot of ceos -- betty: that's what she is writing about. dan: she's as being an entrepreneur is harder than running merrill lynch. is much doing now harder and scarier. being open and honest in white not everyone should leave a great job and go start their own company. and being willing to be honestly to the difference. that is not something ceos would of done in the past. betty: i'm sure a lot of people could empathize with her on that front. dan, thank you so much. dan ross, linkedin executive editor. here is a look at some of the biggest stories in these. americans are starting to use some of that money they are saving from cheap gas. they were up one half of 1%. majorne in cars, eight of

-- 13 magic cadres -- 13 major category saw improvement. rose by thevels most in five months. rising profit margins in service providing more than offset the cheaper prices of goods in the last year. also prices have dropped more than 1%. no university has ever raised as much a stanford. they collected $1.6 billion. second -- thatrk beats the mark set by harvard. you can always get more business news at bloomberg.com. still ahead, the selloff deepening for european shares. we are coming back with the european close. mark joins the right after the break.

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♪ ♪ betty: we are moments with the european close. drill down into the most important global news. mark, you seen quite a selloff today. will be no asking about how the european session will finish today. down by 1.6% today. is there anything that can derail the fed? commodities are down to the 16 year low. emerging-market stocks falling. gauge tracking emerging market currencies have fallen to a record. isn't anything to derail the fed? betty: it does not seem that way

at all. we have economic numbers that look like they won't change anything in the landscape. mark: cautions prevailing and that is why we are seeing stocks falling. a few days until -- jeremy stretches joining us. what a massive weaker currencies with all those central-bank meetings. new zealand today. boiled down for the six day. crude at the lowest level since 2000. rockyre wheeling at the -- of the charts world. brendan greeley. bring it on brendan. ♪ sure, tv has evolved over the years.

it's gotten squarer. brighter. bigger. it's gotten thinner. even curvier. but what's next?

for all binge watchers. movie geeks. sports freaks. x1 from xfinity will change the way you experience tv. tand that's what we're doings to chat xfinity.rself, we are challenging ourselves to improve every aspect of your experience. and this includes our commitment to being on time. every time. that's why if we're ever late for an appointment, we'll credit your account $20. it's our promise to you. we're doing everything we can to give you the best experience possible. because we should fit into your life. not the other way around. ♪ betty: welcome back. mark as wering in wrap up the trading session and this week.

mark: european stocks slumping to a two-month low. next week's federal reserve meeting looming. the european close starts right now. ♪ betty: we will be taking you from new york to london in the next half hour. mark kicks things off for us. in what is been a pretty selloff mark: a two-month low for the stoxx 600, the biggest weekly drop. following for eight days. every industry group on the stoxx 600 fell today, fell this week led by basic resources and energy companies. the index down by 8%. the most in two months. bring on the fed. betty: bring on the fed indeed.