time warner handing a major defeat to the u.s. department of justice the decision allows the birth of a media giant with massive and model let the capacity in creation and distribution of content from sesame street to westworld the president also throws wide open the door to murder more merger media is that a moment when the corporate media landscape is already shifting rapidly and i trust lawyers from the justice department had demanded that both eighty and time warner divest certain assets before merging and soon one the parties block the chief of the n i trust division now says the office is reviewing the decision in detail before deciding whether to ask for a stay or pursue appeals and here to help us delve more into the issue and what it might mean for consumers and margot's professorial lecture at american university and andre barlow of a partner at doyle barlow bats him and mozart welcome to both of you andre have to say one i give you credit for being in that darn court room every day for six weeks

it couldn't have been fun but you must to picked up on something because you called it here on our program that you thought this is what the judge was go going to do why are you so certain of that i think you know judge leon. he was really impressed by the fact that the government's own witness in the government conceded that there was going to be cost savings from this vertical merger and that those cost savings would be passed on to directv consumers so basically you know these cost savings passed on to directv consumers which is about twenty five million subscribers out there they're all going to see reduced prices so that was a concession by the government and its star economic witness professor shapiro besides that in terms of this case we're talking about is not a vertical for closure case which is your traditional vertical case meaning that eighteen thousand. would withhold that turner content from distributors rather this

case was about raising the cost to these other distributors and when i say distributors talking about the cable companies we're talking about dish and we're talking about the virtual players like sony and you tube live t.v. and sling so you know that was the issue would they have increased bargaining leverage after this merger and could they increase prices to those rivals and the problem was twofold one the distributor testimony was mixed you know comcast came in and they said nothing would change after this merger charter and dish had mixed testimony. other distributors came in and they they gave gave support to the d.o.j. case but it didn't have any it wasn't backed by any analysis it was basically speculative testimony and the government's own witness had a difficult time supporting his own bargaining model which the judge you know took

you know he agreed in concept to the bargaining model but what he was concerned about was the inputs into that model and that's where professor shapiro had a difficult time support of fell flat on the actual data the judge what the theory but not necessarily how it would work in practice and so you're saying essentially the judge looked at all of the competition arguments but really sided on consumers would be paying less but given d.o.j. contentious margaux i mean are you surprised that there weren't at least some conditions some sort of divestment required i have to wonder with comcast coming in and saying well we don't think there's going to be any issue for us let's remember that comcast is getting ready we many think to make an all cash offer for twenty first century fox is assets that are on the chopping block so i have to wonder. a

little bit about whether or not comcast was really acting in good faith or if they were acting perhaps with a more long term strategy. you know i think it'll be interesting to see how this is going to reshape the media landscape not just for eighteen tee time warner but for other media deals that might be on the horizon who is looking to unload or take or buy parts of smaller companies or streaming services or you know film television internet i mean i think that we're going to see this dramatically shape the media landscape for the next eighteen to twenty four months. i mean this essentially a major green light to all these companies that were thinking they might get into it but heretofore it's not that soft fraught with and i trust problems and we better not go down that road are they now in their board rooms and in their c.e.o. suites rethinking their whole strategic vision i think they may be and i think the perception is that there is a green light i would say there's a yellow light the judge leon's decision was very fact specific he focused on the

evidence at this trial he focused on the testimony that was provided the documents that were provided and the expert who testified he didn't say that all vertical mergers are you know pro competitive he said the vertical mergers can be an eye competitive so he tried to narrow the scope of what he was doing in this opinion to the facts related to this case so i would say yellow light yes not not a good sign for the d.o.j. did to lose a case but this doesn't mean that they can't bring another vertical case one that's based on maybe the more traditional vertical foreclosure theory so if you have a case out there where let's say you know comcast makes a bid for these fox assets well there could be some issues there with a real vertical foreclosure case that's not simply raising rifles cost case there is. i don't mean this in

a sarcastic way they're probably going to be more lawyers maybe not your firm but they're probably going to hopefully because you're an expert here but i'm just saying this is going to create a whole new area i mean people talk about and i trust all the time but there's a lot of new questions out there so companies are going to be looking at this aren't the problem from a different legal perspective than they did just twenty four hours ago well correct because have had the d.o.j. won this case well they would have been able to block just about any deal where where you have increased bargaining leverage and which would lead to increased prices to other distributors in the media space that would have been a really big deal but you know the point is still well taken that it was a very narrow decision based on the facts of this case and if there's another case out there where you know the maybe maybe you have market power in the upstream in markets. you can still bring that case the d.o.j.

can still bring that case and win that case and margot you've been on the program and we thank you both for coming on but you've been on we've talked about the. look at your crystal ball what do you see as sort of the next thing the next shoe to drop which merger media madness might come next i mean that i wish i could say and perhaps i would be you know buying stocks for those companies right now but i think that deals are inevitable and what i was most struck by in reading the opinion today going through the opinion last night in this morning judge leon's opinion was that he seemed swayed by the idea that a traditional broadcast and cable advertising model wasn't enough to move these companies forward and he seemed to really be concerned with the advertising revenue that was available to digital digital companies like facebook and google and i just thought to myself well what is it that an antitrust case is dealing with corporate advertising profits and where is. the consumer bent into that stream and i just

didn't see it there so i'll be curious to see of courts are going to consider that our judges are going to consider advertising models of big media corporations in the future and it's going to be fascinating to say thank you both for being here margo sus goes professorial lecture i always had tough time with that andre barlow but it certainly appreciate we're smarter because you both were here thank you so much thank you. turning from the courts to corporate crime pricewaterhouse coopers or p w c has been punished with a record setting fined by u.k. regulators less than a year after setting the same record i guess or something to be said for consistency bonus the financial reporting council or f r c issued a a fine of six point five million pounds against b.w.c. for misconduct in relation to accounting work done for collapse u.k. retailer b. h.

s. the f.r.c. also personally find an audit partner p w c steve denison three hundred twenty five thousand pounds mr dennison expressed regret for what he called the mistakes that led to the fines while insisting that p.w. c's work for a four b. h.s. played no role in the collapse a year later and earlier this week news broke that the f.r.c. had sanctioned another of the so-called big four accounting firms k p m g a the fine in that case was three point two million pounds in a matter involving k p m jews work for disgraced tech firm quinn dell later renamed watch stone the u.k. serious fraud office is still conducting a criminal investigation into quinn bell and both the p.w. c. and cases the f.r.c. agreed to lower fines in exchange for settlements as opposed to ongoing litigation . and just when it all seems settled the drama and diplomacy

of the t e the chinese tech giant has flared up this time in the u.s. congress the senate has added a provision that would effectively block the eighty's access to u.s. technology to defense spending to the defense spending authorization bill considered a must pass piece of legislation that would effectively scuttle the deal president trump made to save the chinese company which would be unable to continue operating without components made in. united states the amend was pushed by a bar partisan cast of senate co-sponsors including noted foreign policy hardliner tom carton of arkansas and the leader of the senate democrats chuck schumer of new york the white house a signal that will lobby against the policy writer when the bill moved to popper's between the two chambers of congress but senate foreign relations committee chair bob corker of tennessee was remarkably unconcerned telling reporters i don't think the president cares about z t e and claiming that mr trump gave republican leaders a quote wink and a nod to suggest his opposition would be a charade

a number of republicans from the house of representatives however signaled their support for the writer. and time now for a quick pause for the promotional cause but stick around because when we return with a plethora of energy news we talk while prices with futures and currencies expert the simpler trading roshi horner plus the european union leaders here to meet at the end of the month relate to the e.u. formally what are the key leaders saying party's peter all of a look tell us from europe as we go to break here are the numbers at the closing bell. i think it trying to imagine as i say things just to be controversial and you would not withstand the level of attacks of police have asked minutes to ten of having my

passport take ten of social services being called on my children my family being under threat of coming to jihad is plotting to behead me in the event the twenty seventeen i don't believe you would withstand those levels of people trying to trying to silence you if you didn't believe what you said. there was a kid saying compensate the boys tonight. on the program they can. go and.

move on which i. can show them the movies because i'm on the stand in court and if you can show. them when this. does not. cause it is a. welcome back aspiring automaker tesla has announced that it will lay off forty one hundred workers effectively cutting their total workforce by nine percent tesla has added eight thousand jobs this year bringing their total workforce to forty six thousand the cuts were announced in a company white e-mail sent by tesla c.e.o. celebrity investor ilan must who later tweeted the full message mr moss said only

salaried employees would be laid off and insisted the cuts quote will not affect our ability to reach the model three production targets in the coming months tesla's come under enormous pressure from investors to meet declared production targets and mr must recently appeared to chafe at pointed questions about tesla stability in an investor conference call last month he dismissed what he. called boring bonehead questions about the company's financial fundamentals tesla says they will produce five thousand model threes per week by the end of this month month up from thirty six hundred currently mr must however recently had more success manufacturing and selling get this twenty thousand flame throwers in one month and celebrated that milestone last saturday. and as mexico looks toward their presidential election on july first the presumed finance minister for the front running leftist candidate has said he would close the door on future

foreign investment in mexico's energy sector and perhaps cancel current contracts the candidate lopez obrador obrador of the moreno party reportedly wants more foreign investment but a close aide says the only exception is that there is going to be a halt to oil tenders apart from that the aide said anywhere they want to invest let them invest mexica lawmakers change the constitution back in two thousand and thirteen to allow foreign investment in mexico's national energy resources more than one hundred contracts since then have been delivered delivered four billion dollars in foreign investment to mexico. and the permian basin stretching across the united states from texas to new mexico is already the biggest shale oil producing region in the country and is set to become the world's third largest oil producing region in the world according to a new forecast from analyst that i.h.s. market i.h.s. analysts say the region's oil production will increase to five point four million

barrels per day by two thousand and twenty three the area currently produces three point two million barrels of oil per day more than the nations of mexico and nigeria the researchers say that by twenty twenty three the permian basin will have a greater output then russia and saudi arabia but the scenario envisioned by i.h.s. analysts would require an estimated three hundred eight billion dollars of investment to build forty one thousand new wells in addition to the pipeline infrastructure needed to deliver that production to market the wells would also depend upon highly polluting hydraulic fracking techniques more widely known as fracking. and sticking with energy oil prices went through the air as we went to the air we're sixty six dollars in that sort of trading range while brant crude at london was trading in the mid seventy five's and the u.s. government reported a larger than expected reduction in domestic crude supplies which was the largest single week drop since the end of march however recent data shows an increase in

opec production here discuss all of that and more as futures and currencies expert simpler trading hoarder welcome back thank you so much we always preceded when you're here what do you make of the current situation with prices thanks i love being here and today it's been a very interesting day between tweets and we've got an opec meeting closing in interestingly enough in the meeting we have coming up right now all sits at lows it's sitting at some interesting lows at the moment and i do see higher highs coming after the meeting and that meeting of the opec meeting coming up on whatever the end of next week i mean it was interesting to me usually opec sort of you sort of know where they're headed but the saudis went ahead and they boosted their production before the meeting did that surprise you. a hundred and sixty thousand barrel boost i don't know that it puts a big dent in it but it sure makes a good show i mean you've got to think about what's happening right now in india

india now for the third time is trying to get the asian countries together to find a way to possibly either remove what they call this asian premium or do more business with the u.s. so when you talk about the shale output earlier you're absolutely right i think that the saudis have got to be put in a little bit of a show to quell the concerns that china and india have right now because they're getting ready to talk with each other they're getting ready to talk with japan and south korea and they want to put together basically an oil buying club and specifically with regard to india rajiv i mean recently they said that they would continue despite u.s. sanctions on iran that the indians would continue to buy iranian oil is india really a huge market for oil from the middle east. it is it's second only to china it's third in the in the world behind china and the u.s. so yes the demand is definitely there it's going to continue to grow if we fast

forward just a handful of years we're talking about probably china and india consuming fifty percent of what production we see globally in oil i mean they need the oil so right now they're struggling with the price and they've been very vocal about where opec has been taking prices higher they blame opec as as we're seeing a lot of people both in india and in the u.s. are and you can't question the fact that opec might just be putting a little bit of window dressing on one hundred sixty one thousand barrels not enough and again aramco that aramco i.p.o. which isn't talked being talked about a lot the saudis need the crude oil prices to be up over seventy five probably closer to eighty so i don't think we've seen the highs yet well i mean the blaming on the highway oil prices i'm sure the saudis would say you know meeting their goal and the other members of opec i want to ask about russia because russia was part of this one point six million dollars production cut back whatever it was sixteen eighteen months ago or so is russia going to ramp up production or have they

already started. i think they already have they've talked about it they've been very transparent i think the russians and the saudis have been very transparent about the increase in production they've cited the reasons why whether that be venezuela whether that be brazil angola the sanctions on iran and then also i think there's another topic that we're going to see coming out of opec which you bring up the meeting going to be on the twenty second and twenty third is the spare capacity production buffer that we have to now look at with a lot of these sanctions in the geopolitical tensions from time to time flaring up if we do see the increase in production like we're seeing that buffer continues to shrink and that makes oil potentially even more volatile to the upside so we have increased production which might be all well and good we just got about sixty seconds left but tell us about the demand side is it still growing also it is but it depends on who you ask so if you ask opec who's historically been behind the

eight ball with good reason to claim any kind of demand is decreasing they're pretty much staying pat we're seeing the i.a.e.a. numbers a lower for twenty eight teen but that might just be a temporary drop if you take say twenty eight thousand forward nineteen twenty the increase of well over one hundred and twenty hundred thirty barrels per million barrels per day is really what's in focus and traders are thinking that we're going to see lower crude pullbacks are being bought and i think the markets communicating where they think well it's going to go in that tire rosy harner futures and currencies expert at some portray thank you again for joining us thank you and as european union leaders prepare to meet at the end of this month related to your reform one of the key leaders saying artie's peter all over joins us from europe with the latest. when e.u. leaders gather in brussels at the end of june one of the things that they're going

to be discussing is the plans that have been laid forward for reform of the block by both the leaders of germany and france now a manual on an angle or merkel they agree on a lot of different topics but perhaps where this could get a bit interesting is those points where they don't agree we're going to start off on the bits where they seem pretty much on all singing from the same song sheet when it comes to migration both of said that it's important that the e.u. members present a united front on migration now both mccrone and angela merkel they favor giving more money and more personnel to frontex the e.u. external border force in fact both of them one way or another eventually want to see frontex completely responsible for the asylum process throughout the whole of the european union they also are in agreement when it comes to reform of the european commission now both emmanuel mccrone and angela merkel want to see less

commissioners who have less power they do differ though over the well how many commissioners should be cut and also what changes should be made to how commission is end up in the job but now we get to the big disagreements the main one is going to be over defense now while both the french and german leaders say that they do support a european defense force and sometimes it's been called an e.u. army angela merkel will she prefers the more diplomatic route the german chancellor saying that the e.u. should have a seat at the u.n. security council she also backs the founding of a european security council as well that would have a rotating membership there it's really going down the diplomatic route with how she sees the e.u. taking up a position on the world stage very different from a new world macron he is poor. for a military intervention force he wants to see an e.u.

military able to deploy in foreign countries this is something that doesn't really go down too well here in germany for a number of different reasons and that's why angular merkel is saying no what's also going to be a big problem to do with with crohn's plan is that he sees british forces being integra will to a european intervention force and well that's going to be a problem for two main reasons first break that britain is set to leave the european union perhaps in the next couple of years and also when it comes to support one of the main reasons an e.u. defense force hasn't been. pushed forward in the past is britain was vehemently against it it's only when there's talk of the u.k. leaving the bloc that any you defense forces back on the agenda so very little chance i would think of a manual micron's plan working there there's also big differences between paris and brussels when it comes to finance and reform of the eurozone now angela merkel she

favors the founding of a european monetary fund that would be a body that was able to provide funds to failing banking systems and some senses but also it would be able to investigate nation's financial systems to see when things are going wrong now there's a lot of opposition to that because it says that while people say that brussels would have too much power to snoop into individual countries fiscal goings on there under merkel has also said that she favors the establishment of an e.u. investment fund now the idea behind this is simmie make sure that all economies across the eurozone a growing at around the same rate that nobody gets left behind nobody storms out in front however the plan that she's talking about in order to do that that would require billions of euros of investment in fact in one. merkel's own words she expects it to be a low double digit billion budget but in no place does she mention where that cash

will come from the whole plan really doesn't seem to cost it out for the future of the eurozone the few involve a lot more spending that's how he sees pretty much spending cash and in order when it comes to the tax just yes but when it comes to calling on member states to increase their contributions to the e.u. budget that's not likely to go down too well with the happen so the one thing that is needed if in the e.u. you're going to need a united front from both france and germany so the twenty ninth of june be looking to trade a was stocked full of information but that's it for this time you can catch bombast dish network channel to any or t.v. the free t.v. app you can get us at youtube dot com boom bust r.t. or catch a suit. football's

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