alix: alex sherman joining me. what is your take on this news that comcast could drop time warner cable? >> we are lucky to have the story first, and of our reporting is accurate, comcast made the decision of this point they will pull the plug on this deal. apparently they may be having a board meeting later today. a decision has artie been made at this stage. if you have been following the coverage starting from last night, it may not be a surprise with the fcc recommended this gets hit -- gets hit to a hearing. the company spending the time and money to fight this thing and the doj leaning to soothe this deal, it may have been too much. there is no breakup fee. when comcast signed the deal way back in february 2014 a green to do this, they knew there was a chance regulators would not take too kindly to a deal that consolidate so much power so much broadband capacity, plus nbc universal is owned by comcast. we thought for a little while the deal would go through because comcast and time warner cable do not compete

mark: alex sherman, you broke the story yesterday. congratulations, nice job.t 2:20, we will get a check of the top stories. 2:30, the hockey legend joins me to discuss the stanley cup playoffs. at 2:45, the best of the week on "bottom line." we will be right back. ♪ mark: welcome back. breaking news. the statue of liberty is being evacuated. new york police are responding to the report of a suspicious package. the police department said it had votes at the scene along with the national park service. visitors are posting funds online showing hundreds of people being herded toward a ferry landing. tourists said they were taken off boats while trying to leave nearby ellis island. those vessels were used to evacuate liberty island. stay with bloomberg television. we will have more on this breaking news story as soon as we get details. silicon valley has been criticized for lack of diversity. sheryl sandberg says companies have to be convinced it is a worthwhile goal. sandberg spoke to emily chang in an exclusive interview. >> i think what will really motivate busi

you are a better man -- busy man alex sherman. who are the suitors for salesforce.com? ex: they hired banks because they got an approach. i'm not sure if they are up for sale or not. someone wants to buy them. the theoretical suitors are oracle, microsoft, possibly s.a.p.. we are trying to do our work and figure out who may be approached. if that approach is still alive. all of those are still questions that are going to require a little bit more reporting work by our team. olivia: what about the price? salesforce has a market cap of $48 billion. what is it really worth? how to potential suitors figure it out? alex: it is a huge hurdle to any deal. it would be the largest acquisition of pure tech of all time. a company would really have to really pay up. it would be a totally transformational acquisition for a company like oracle or ibm that has struggled to get into the cloud. salesforce is one of the best in class, market share-wise. a lot of these legacy companies have struggled to get into that area. olivia: watch this space, as they say. alex sherman, thank you so m

alex sherman has been breaking lots of news on this. why would this be subject to less scrutiny? in reason, charter is a smaller company than comcast, and it is not own this anonymous media asset in nbc universal, which comcast does it charter is a pure play cable company, buying another pure play cable company in time warner cable. a smaller company buying a larger company, and the end result would be fewer subscribers with high-speed broadband service than if comcast were to buy time warner cable. for all those reasons, a deal would theoretically be an easier sell to regulators. cory: i'm going to break this into three issues. the first is the size. at what point should we imagine because when the first time warner-comcast deal was proposed it did not seem like size would be an issue, because they were not overlapping. when does size matter? what is the limit for the fcc, or the ftc i should say? alex: so you are saying size matters? cory: i was not going to do that. i'm much more grown up than you. [laughter] alex: we don't know when size matters. we were not given a great answ

alex sherman as well. >> they have got 60 million active listeners. if you look back even until may or so of 2014, the numbers were 10 million subscribers and 40 million active users. it should be no surprise now they're coming out and trying to raise more money in their quite on their way to do so. they were previously valued at $5 billion. it is now $8.5 billion. matt: they are facing a lot more potential competition. apple and google getting into the game. jay-z has his own title service, one he is working on with other artists. alex: you throw in other competitors. but also, what other people assume these days come at a half billion valuation, does it make more sense for them to sell to a large tech company if google cannot get into the business of stream music, does it make sense for google to shell out 10 to $14 million for spotify? we have learned for years that google and spotify have had preliminary conversations at the highest levels. those seem to have fallen off the table, similar to many other tech companies going through the same path in

alex sherman, as well, staying with me.k to the protest that broke up the ecb news conference in the last hour. mario draghi was briefly interrupted after a protester jumped on the table in front of him and disrupted those proceedings. after settling down, he realized he had lost his introductory page of the speech. mario draghi: it would be good if i had my introductory statement with me, otherwise i will have to improvise. thank you. betty: alright. a little bit of humor from mario draghi after what must of been a scary moment, seeing the protester jump up on his table. i want to get some more insight on this incident. joining us now is hans nichols. what do we know about who this protester is and what exactly happened here? hans: we know very little about the actual protester, the female who got up and wanted to talk about the tyranny of what she sees as the european central bank. what is remarkable to me about the incident is that the new ecb headquarters in frankfurt they just moved there, they inaugurated the building

federal antitrust lawyers are said to be leaning against the comcast time warner cable merger and alex sherman joins me on the phone. thank you for the time. has significant is this? -- how significant is this? alex: extremely significant. this was the biggest deal of the year last year. traders have been watching this closely, as we are on well over a year since the deal was announced. the initial reaction was that the deal would go through. more critics have come for pressing on the idea that comcast have too much say in the world of high speed broadband. even though they don't compete against each other, a deal would allow comcast to have such an overwhelming majority of highs. broadband access in the u.s. the regulators started to think you know, in this new world where television is going to be channeled also over the internet, and internet growth is so wide maybe we are reluctant on giving one company that also owns nbc universal so much control over the broadband pipes. i would have to be the legal argument, the main legal argument that lawyers would be recommending to the doj if, in fa

alex sherman is joining me this morning. everyone said ok, charter will have another go and it looks like they are. >> they have been public in saying they were interested in doing so. maybe the timing because clearly they were chomping at the bit to get in here. what we learned on friday is we have already talks at the advisor level. no conversations yet at the executive level. to question people are talking last year about how there is a frayed relationship to liberty. the ceo, the chairman, i think we are seen as a bit too aggressive may be leading the charge and sort of denigrating time warner cable somewhat unfairly and may be fairly saying their operations are poor, the management structure is poor. it did not go well in the hostile takeover bid. this time around, we may see charter management, their ceo, their cfo maybe keep greg on the side or the relationship is better than liberty and time warner cable from my understanding. that may be different this time around. betty: it was pretty hot so last year. alex sherman

alex sherman is also here. alex has been covering this story. but try to put this in perspective. a bigger deal if antitrust lawyers were to block this transaction from going through than it was when a block at&t from buying t-mobile? alex: it would be a much bigger surprise and have much bigger ramifications in the sense that it would expand the theoretical criteria doj looks at when it blocks a deal. at&t and t-mobile are direct competitors. at&t would be taking out a large competitor any market that only has four players stopped comcast and time warner cable do not compete against each other. from a simple this is how you block deals people who are family or with the stuff from business school, there's an index you look at and say this company has too much market power. that's not the same here. you are replacing your time warner cable systems with comcast systems. stephanie: people who like to look at this from the outside would say too big, too much power. walk us through how that is not the case. alex: if you live in new york city, you can get t-mobile sprint, verizon or at&

he's the man ditching -- he is the managing partner -- along with bloomberg's own alex sherman. he helped rake the story last week. alex you helped break the story's so give us the deal -- break the story so give us the details. alex: the story we broke on friday antitrust lawyers for the doj are leaning toward recommending the doj block the deal. this is a bit of a surprise. even people who are bearish thought it had a 50-50 chance of going through. we are finally getting the first leak in a process that has gone over a year that signals what the g -- what the doj's thinking. if comcast would walk away from the deal rather than pursuing it. stephanie: what are the ramifications? john: we see a series of interactions that are interlinked. charter was made larger. that is connected to this system because it was a stock transaction. you have an at&t directv detail pending. i am optimistic somehow they will find a way through, because there are in a lot of pieces of this. it is -- there are a lot of things that aren't being talked about. stephanie: like what? john: luck net neutrali

cory: alex sherman on bloomberg thank you very much. we are glad to have your leadership on this. "bottom line" like no one else or he is here now with the preview. mark: businesses maximize profit but in today's inter connected global landscape it is not enough to just be profitable. companies must also way social and environmental concerns. ceo's is in other business officials met in new york city today to discuss the first ever fair fashion center. one of the guests was a joint winner of the 2006 nobel peace prize. i interview with him is coming up in it, the deputy prime minister of portugal to discuss the country's economic growth projections, the situation in greece and much more. i will see you at the top of the hour. back to you in san francisco. cory: bloombert west will be right back. ♪ cory: tomorrow i'm going to try to blow your mind at the bloomberg businessweek design conference. the world's top designers and business leaders will gather with some really trippy ideas about how to think about design and business at work. none more so than ceo brown. he will be showing

alex sherman joins us on the phone for more. what are the potential implications for both companies if the deal is blocked? alex: it is hard to say at this point. the easiest word i can say is chaos. i think if the deal is blocked a bunch of things unwind themselves assuming comcast does not go down the road of time to litigate this. if the deal becomes dead, by the way this is a great scoop by our regulatory team, what happens is charter, which has made a side do with comcast, and a couple of weeks ago announced it is fine bright house, it walks back -- buying bright house, the bright house deal was contingent on time warner cable. charter which it originally tried to buy time warner probably comes back in as the only buyer. it is possible time warner could say we want to make a run of this by ourselves now it comcast is not buying us. maybe they don't want to do a deal with charter. i would say that ship may have sailed. it may be too late for time warner cable. they may be forced into doing some deal with charter because their

alex sherman does not watch television but he does watch all of the justice unfolding. microsoft was a dead. ibm was a dad. trying to figure what to do with your cable bill. does any of this have to do with what i pay for cable tv? is my cable bill going to change depending on what justice does or does not do? alex: i don't think so. it is one of the great ironies of what is going on with this deal in justice. what we learned last night was that the doj was leaning toward blocking the deal based on a recommendation from their lawyers. what we learned last night is that the fcc is taking a harder line then doj based on meetings that comcast and time warner cable executive said. tom: let's rip up the script. what is the distinction for brian roberts between the fcc and the department of justice? alex: the department of justice would need to make a case in court. they would need to sue to block the deal. the standard of evidence for the department of justice needs to be higher. the fcc does not need to sue in court. they can simply refer this case to administrative hearing

joining us is reporter alex sherman who broke the story for us. alex, just killing it on the comcast -- time warner charter. alex: from one person i spoke to, it will be higher than what comcast agreed to pay for time warner cable. that was about 159 dollars per share. let's start there, and you can look at time warner cable already today on our news. there's going to be a premium on top of that. they weren't able to reach an agreement, charter offered $132.50 a share. time warner cable well above that level now. so is charter. charter as this deal with bright house they have agreed to. this person told me that the idea might be to keep bright house and add time warner cable and that way you would have an extended balance sheet since that would be a larger company. alix: what you think about what alex just said in terms of price? amy: alex is right. there is an embedded m&a premium in all of these stocks right now. i think charter will have to pay a premium where the stock is currently trading. if time warner cable wants to stand alone by crying br

alex sherman has been very on top of the story. alex: how long? betty: we all thought this would happen. what is going on? alex: even people bearish on the deal tended to at least put it on 50-50. throughout the whole process which began back in february of last year, more than a year into it, we finally heard on friday what a great screw from the right -- great scoop for the regulatory team. they would recommend blocking the deal. comcast and time warner cable will meet with the drg -- doj. on the concessions they could make? if so, what are they? if so, is comcast's with those concessions? what i learned is that it is possible restrictions are so tight, it is not worth it for us to do the deal. there is no breakup fee or that was specifically put in because comcast new they may run into regulatory problems down the road. they own such a high percentage of high-speed broadband across the country. betty: has anything developed in the last few months to make the doj say, hang on guys, let's hold this off for a minute? my -- alex: a great question.

alex sherman is here with more. the tide has turned. s it about doing a hearing that mystical say, hey, the deal is dead? alex: simply the length of it. he cannot remember anyone ever going to the process of going through one of these hearings. they take so long. all of the dirty laundry that may be comcast is not really want aired out there in public washington and also, when rich and i were talking, he pointed out comcast needs customers. if you're going to fight washington, representing consumers, you come across as the bad guy. it may be spiraling away from comcast. invested a lot of time and a lot of money. this thing is not quite dead yet. but i do not think they're looking for a deal. betty: a lot of our coverage has been the, the deal is dead. 14 months ago, we all thought it would happen. the argument for a deal is what? alex: in many ways, comcast product is better than time warner cable. if i were living in an area for i'm warner cable and got comcast is dead it is not necessarily that i got a worse experience. i might've gott

alex sherman will not be in the room but he is with us now. rtment is making some noises recently that it is not feeling this merger. what's going wrong? alex: the first leak in this whole process which started february of last year we heard that anti-trust lawyers were leaning towards recommending blocking the deal. that was going to be the recommendation they gave to the d.o.j. which is the first time that we've really heard any sort of negative sentiment out of the d.o.j. tom: and this is the story that wee seen before. brendan: one of the things that's changed is the department of justice has changed. when the at&t feel apart, we first heard from justice. alex: two things can happen where this deal falls apart. one can be that the d.o.j. blocks the deal and comcast says it's not worth it for us to litigate this thing. the second could be that so many owners conditions are placed on this deal by the d.o.j. where comcast says it's not worth it for us to pursue this because the deal that we thought we were getting isn't the deal we're going to

olivia: we will speak with alex sherman about time warner

joining me to discuss the potential fallout is alex sherman and partner at sullivan and cromwell. you. the interesting saga. we talked on friday and use of the follow-through is chaos across the cable industry. who may come in and pick up the pieces gekko? s? >> i do not think there is another candidate. the only other option is time warner cable goes on on their own and tries to make a go of it as an independent company or charter comes in as the largest shareholder. so the liberty back charter comes in and tries to negotiate a deal. for people that have followed this charter originally put time warner cable of or grabs and made a hostile bid after they could not work out a friendly deal. the interesting thing is can they reach of friendly deal since they were not able to back in late 2013 and early 2014? alix: in the meantime, what can they do? >> i think that is what is going to happen. ultimately the argument they will make is you have satellite you have the telephone companies like verizon and fires and at&t. so there is a lot of competition in the space. i think what they wi

alex sherman and lisa bramlett's joining me this morning.i see you guys, we're always talking about food. mcdonald's menu just got smaller. seven sandwiches in a push to speed up its kitchens and simple fight customer choices. customers will no longer be able to get the deluxe quarter pounder. alex: how can you make a decision about six chicken sandwiches? betty: they were making too much and getting almost too many choices and clogging up the kitchen. this is a way to make them more efficient. peter: just kick back -- alex: just kick back. lisa: one of the sandwiches was honey barbecue snack wraps. they are known for the big mac, their shakes, their fries. this is why people go to mcdonald's. betty: to be fair, mcdonald's is being criticized for not being innovative enough. they need to come up with new products. alex: i think lisa hit on the fundamental problem with mcdonald's. the nation is moving toward eating healthier. a snack wrap is a lower calorie option but it fits in this neverland of maybe it does not make sense for mcdonald's. l

joining me now is cory johnson and out sherman. alex, salesforce.com is a very important stock. could be a potential buyer? alex: it would be the biggest attack acquisition of all time if the deal goes through. you are counting on one hand more or less. it could be oracle. it could be microsoft. it could be s.a.p.. those are the three conveys a come to mind to begin with that have the firepower that would be able to buy salesforce, which just keeps growing and growing. huge sales growth. and now they add even more to the market cap because the stock is up today. so it is a big deal when you tap on a premium. alix: does salesforce even want to sell itself? cori: what we understand as they have been approached. they would have to hire bankers. there are a lot of buyers out there. in these days of effectively zero interest rates, anything is possible in the magic of credit. salesforce only has their plans to run themselves as an individual company. but it has not been a business that generates a lot of free cash flow. before that, they needed negative free cash flow as a result of

sherman oaks california... and our returning champion -- a chef from steamboat springs, colorado... whose 4-day cash winnings total... and now here is the host of "jeopardy!" -- alex you, johnny. thank you, ladies and gentlemen. we are now about halfway through our 34th season of "jeopardy!" programs, and i cannot recall a time when we have had as contestants so many, for want of a better term overachievers as players. [ laughter ] our champions are winning a lot of money and many, many, many games. and that's been true this whole season. brian and sarah, i'm happy to welcome you aboard, but you're in some heavyweight company here against our champion, greg. nevertheless good luck to all three as we move you into the first round of play, which is the jeopardy! round and which today has these categories... ...after the one we give you. you get to deal with... "v-o" coming up in each correct response. and of course, the... or, 500. greg, start. liqueurs for $200. sarah.