is cristina alesci and scarlet fu. been and it is like i can see it. >> it is going to be very cold. and bourbon, don't forget the bourbon. time for the morning briefs, because it is time for that. >> i missed this so much. it is like a three-week vacation. tochina's local debt rose ,.95 chilean dollars underscoring financial risks in the world's second-biggest economy among the other risks that we are seeing in china. in the u k, home prices rose in december. they will lead gains in 2014 according to the track. here in the u.s., economic data at 10 a.m. ending home sales at 10: 30. france, thenote in constitutional council there gave the go-ahead yesterday on the government's millionaire tax. bad news for millionaires there. last for 2013 and 2014 and taxes salaries above one million euros at 75%. ouch. >> is a big number and they go after the football players, the soccer players. it is a huge number. is not likely doom united states, but the answer is a mess. look at stocks on currencies and commodities. let's get th

cristina alesci is with me now. the last trading week of the year, we thought it you are busy. but what is the warren buffett strategy here? >> he is betting on moving stuff around, oil and gas with increased production that all analysts are looking forward to. at the end of the day, it is a toll roads that, basically charging customers to move oil and gas around, and for this company it makes an additive mode --es the company oil move faster to the pipeline so as pipelines reach their capacity, they are looking for ways to boost productivity. this fits nicely with two other bets, one in pipelines, and another in railroads. >> part of this is a bet that u.s. join will continue, so i assume you expect to see more deals like this in the new year. >> even though oil and gas is pretty quiet this year, we did see a few deals, and it was one of the industries that saw a relatively healthy amount of looking, but people are to see more activity precisely because of what you said, production will continue. there are no signs

i am tom keene here with scarlet fu and cristina alesci. so 2011. washington.always a couple of years behind. >> is it too strange to say i am looking for to washington doing something? >> you're really optimistic. >> i don't remember congress doing something since i'm a i don't know, lincoln. >> 55 tax breaks are set to expire, raising everything from airline travel to my daily train commute today tuition checks. these are just the tip of the iceberg. there are a lot of tax breaks set to expire. >> there are. you have the individual issues. you have the commuter tax breaks. $240 right now, that will drop to about $130 as of tonight. coulds schumer said this affect over 700 thousand new yorkers. a huge deal from the individual side of things. it is a massive thing for businesses as well. the research and development tax credit, something intel, personal myers, companies like that, rely on. about $7 billion a year. that expires tonight. you have tax credits for hiring veterans, energy-efficient tax breaks are gone as well. you have private mortgage insurance wri

cristina alesci has been looking into this. >> there are too many to count. >> this is actually reallynteresting. it affects a lot of different industries. >> you say it makes a lot of sense, one agency buying another. the man who runs william morris endeavor has done this before. he combined the businesses and made them more efficient to bring on more clients and potentially having last cost is you are doing with fewer agents. this is not the same kind of business. img has an agency business but the profitability will come from developing contents, which it has been doing -- sports content. essentially, nationalizing local or college sport and bring in big-money sponsors. >> the creation of the sec league and the sec channel, the university of texas, it is created new media entities. >> it's a huge opportunity for them. can he keep the guys around who built the business to still build it for a new management team? ari has a big personality. you've met him. you know. do they even want to guide the stick around or do they think they can do a better job? >> we are showing pictures of tay

chris cristina alesci, thank you. emily.eff basis, tim armstrong, elon musk delivering some unforgettable lines this year. we bring you the best tech quotes from 2013 next. ♪ >> welcome back erie it i'm emily chang. i would like to die on mars, just not on impact. that's a quote from elon musk at this years sxsw conference. for more unforgettable lines from the year in technology, let's go back to cory johnson in new york. click there are lots of limes that i want to forget. nicholas thompson, editor for the new yorker, joins us. he's come up with some of the most ridiculous or incredible thing said in technology and he's here to talk about them. i want to go through a few. tommy the story behind them. number one, just -- jeff bezos. " are you lazy or just incompetent?" [laughter] >> this is something he said to one of his employees. it was listed in brad stone's book about him. they do not adore the way he is portrayed. the story of the book is very interesting because it's a book about him, amazon, a very important company

very much, bloombergs cristina alesci.'s continue with img, a major player when it comes to representing sports, athletes, as well as producing sports programming. our next guest is becoming a star in his own right. kyle larson was the nascar rookie of the year. this upcoming year, he will not only be racing in the nationwide spirit -- series, but also the sprint cup series. it is a pleasure, kyle. thanks for coming in. >> i have been busy in new york, driving around. >> it is not the same kind of traffic. >> i think we need to bring some of these taxidrivers onto to the racetrack. they would do a good job. >> tell us about the first time you got into nascar. what was it like? untilidn't get into it 2012. i haven't been in it a whole lot, very long, but i had a blast with it. i think i got night or something my first race. i have been a big fan of nascar growing up, as a child, a big fan of jeff gordon and guys like that. i'm glad to be up in the cup series now and get to compete with those guys. >> 17 top 10 nationwide fi

cristina alesci has been listening in. any news?k's stores. >> it is only going to get bigger and better. they have avoided the question so far. we are just getting into the analysts' questions. it is likely the executive a lot to avoid this. investors are betting on the deal coming together. we have seen the stock price, on both sides -- stock price come up on both sides. the results of a poet jos. a bank -- the results today put even betterin an position. men's wearhouse is in a weaker position. it is easier for them to be the they do not have a ceo. they miss earnings last quarter and they have an activist investor who has been publicly prodding them to do something. in the sense that why do these results matter? it makes jos. a bank look even better. >> could jos. a bank look better? >> jos. a bank shares keep going up in a down market. why? >> investors anticipate some kind of battle between these two. maybe men's wearhouse will come back, jos. a bank will come with a bid. investors.verlapping the activist i just mentioned is a

he is here with us along with cristina alesci.truggling with whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. in your experience, did you get a sense for whether it is better to have blackstone as your guy who than some lives a few blocks away? >> this week, erik said "di rtbag" on television. >> the families we talked to said some of them had difficulties contacting the property management companies for firms like blackstone. callhave to go through centers as opposed of calling their landlord down the street. country around the can't complain about landlords. the question is, when they are scaling up, are they able to deal with problems that will -- >> and they provide us is very service? >> when blackstone bought this property, the family was facing foreclosure. >> they were several months behind. their point was that they never received a notification until the day before foreclosure. >> that has nothing to do with laxton. the bank foreclosed upon them. itit was not blackstone, would have been another investor. who knows how they w

cristina alesci has been looking into how all of this could unfold. >> more like a fight, not a danced here, we might get guidance from the company on the call today. the big question will be which --agement team that's >> cristina, we are having some mic issues. we will fix that and get back to you. let's move onto another story. it is almost impossible not to spot a u-haul on the highway. you have probably not seen the billionaire behind the biggest moving and storage business. peter newcomb joins us for more. great to have you with us. such is the price my story -- such a surprising life story for this guy named mark shoen. >> his father leonard shoen founded the company and he was a serial merrier -- marrier or divorcer. we have been tracking the fortunes of him and his brother. their stock in the parent of u- haul, something south of $1 billion. our reporter in boston was digging through some old filings. they had the storage business off the balance sheet and he started digging around and discovered that he has been buying storage properties from u-haul over the years and that f

cristina alesci have been following the story. explain to me what happened.were looking for buyer for the entire company but they get a partial investment from blackstone group what do we know? let's blackstone is giving investors confidence. they could not come to a likely evaluation meeting of the minds about how much the company is actually worth, so they settled on the deal of a private investment. less because of what crocs will do, take the investment it was getting from blackstone group and repurchase some of the shares publicly traded. that is why we are seeing a positive reaction to the market. isp in mind also that this an approval from a big and well- known investor that says we are confident the company can turn itself around and introduce new expandingnd continue internationally. chrysler does the confidence come from? crocs have been struggling and it is seen as a data's product. in a?oes blackstone see >> a very good question. you have to look at it as a financial investor would. they probably ran the numbers and said, ok, if they make the inve

cristina alesci is inside on the toss.t is an interesting deal and has as big names as you could imagine. class absolutely. if there's one thing you need to know about the deal, if you thought emmanuel was a big deal for this deal, he is an even bigger deal now. he is going to be combining william morris endeavor with ing , diversifying his business, really, away from hollywood, and it in addition to having the agency business, he will now have a very big sports business and not just on the agency side, but also on the licensing side. they are getting into a much different business right now. silver lake, how it plays into this, is that they back emmanuel back in 2002. >> the inspiration for ari gold in entourage. class exactly, a caricature. correct every that the character. you could see. class i do not want to know what that night was like. >> in a full disclosure, i am a client of img. the very bottom of the list of its stars. tell me who the biggest stars are. it,s d manning, you name they have the big man sphere that

i know -- cristina alesci is with me now. i know overall dealmaking was something like 20% lower than last year, right? >> that is right, when you look at it from a volume standpoint. on the number of deals, we did see quite a decline. that was not surprising. these are the bread-and-butter deals that drive the market. year where the monster deals. what am i talking about? the $130 billion deal from verizon. then there were some others, including heinz, a warren buffett deal. and we have the dell take private. all of those drove the volume numbers this year. in fact, those five or six deals both in the u.s. and globally accounted for 20% to 425% -- 225% of all volume -- 20% to 25% of all your volume deals last year. >> which ones are the leaders? >> goldman is the big winner by the numbers. dice the dataand a couple of different ways. clearly, goldman sachs had a big role in the verizon wireless deal. that got it a nice spot at the top of the league tables. that said, they did miss out on some of the other big deals. and let'

alesci, you, cristina as well as matt g. miller.ie hyman has been looking at some of the other big companies in china. what are some of the other chinese owned companies coming to america? brandse are not many that are well-known in the u.s. owned by chinese companies. ibmvo, when they bought the inbusiness several years ago 2005, initially branded the ibm thinkpad, and then they recently changed over the branding. in the pork business, midfield being bought for 4.7 billion -- smithfield being bought for $4.7 billion. volvo was also bought in the summer of 2010. these are the three most prominent. you have chinese companies making inroads here, but those are the existing brands that have been acquired by chinese companies. >> what has the deal flow been like? >> over the past 10 years, 700 deals planned. some of them did not go through. an attempt tos buy unical. there were some concerns about china controlling the oil and gas business in the u.s. then there was that regulatory business with smithfield. eal scuttling of the unical d

. >> cristina alesci went down and to get a firsthand look. >> what some people will do for money. >> the market, the same few weeks that we saw. they were a double of what its ipo. they came out of the gate at $13 and then went down into the single digits. right now, we are pushing up to $12 a share. those of the companies where you will have a double. it is not going to happen with the usual suspects. that is over right now. you want to make the point, everyone needs to understand that apple is a place where we go to hide when the market looks risky. do expect apple to break out against the other tech stocks which may start to fall. >> he will keep you with us. is the kind of things that people's ears perk up when they hear about apple. we will take you inside a place reserved for the wealthiest people in the world. it is a fault with a swiss bank. 2013 might have been the year of the ceo shuffle. we will look at who left, who got tapped, and what the big jobs are still open. get your resumes ready. we will be right back. >> if you are hiding assets in switzerland, you might want to

we have to bring in cristina alesci -i. a bit of a surprise? >> not really.were anticipating something. for the last couple of weeks with her blackstone was the for a piper here transaction. continue to be publicly traded. there will be a lot less of them. they will take it from blackstone and repurchase some of the shares. what this amounts to is a vote of confidence. investors have been losing confidence because it has not been able to innovate away from what we're seeing right now. classic clogs are durable but are losing a following. also stepping down. any sense of what will happen then? like this was a prerequisite for blackstone making the investments. findre going to have to something very quickly. they do not want a vacuum in leadership. blackstone will have a lot to say in who that person is. what blackstone is really betting on is asia. at the end of the day, about 40% of the revenues come from asia. they think they can get bigger and more important. the brand is still niche small, more of a lifestyle brand. a bit of aill desperation move for any c

here with the details is cristina alesci and dominic romano. 2.4 billion dollars. sounds too low. it is actually a good price. there were other bidders in this auction. to be honest, a lot of them did not think the company was worth that much. on the seller side, they were adamant about getting north of 2.5, even two point $6 billion. this is an impressive price for the sellers. they got close to what they wanted. a lot of people will look at this on the face of it and say this is ari emanuel doing the same thing he has done before. he took his agency endeavor and combined it with william morris and took out a lot of overhead. and became a more efficient business but ing is a different company. >> one is hollywood and one is sports. >> not only that. ing is in the content business. it is not about selling people or getting a cut off of their salaries. it is about selling content. that is why ari likes this. >> you think back to the william morris endeavor merger, there were some conflicts of personality, just like you would have in any merger. and i just wonder if we are going to

cristina alesci is with me now. it has been an interesting story. throughi spoke about it the year, this idea that crocs was looking for an entire buyer. that did not happen, so minority stake is the next best thing. >> this gives other investors the confidence perhaps to back this company with such a well- known investor like blackstone. clearly, a lot of work to be done here. the popularity of those rubber shoes significantly declining here in the u.s. blackstone is betting on an increase outside of the u.s., not just in their shoes, but there are other things that they make. growsre hoping that that in the popularity of the brand. i spoke to john mcardle, the ceo, and he is betting big on this expansion in asia. ,hey are trying to get all ages from walkers all the way to 100 years old, buying crocs. is the question for investors now about the ceo, who will it be? blackstone will be a part of the decision-making. unusual not to see a ceo come in as we see one going out. to want to give reassurance investors there will not be a vacuum there. see an

cristina alesci, our mergers and at position correspondent made very clear the animal spirit was not. what you see at cerberus and the celebration of a hilton deal, does it bode well for next year? >> i am optimistic that that will continue. i know in my own personal business we bought seven companies already this year. i think the momentum and optimistic outlook for next year should continue. familiarou are really with the public-private, go public again scenario. what other risks hilton might have to watch out for in doing that? >> i think number one, going private -- my experience at cerberus, we were able to do things you otherwise would not be able to do in the public sector. we were able to monetize about a billion dollars in what i call non-earning assets. we were focused more on cash than the book value. if you were public, the analyst would give you a whacked because it was below book value. but you have to make sure that retain then or operational focus and focus on excellence and continuous improvement in those operations. >> lets rip up the script. 7:00 a.m. on a wednesda

all three angles covered for you -- paul sweeney, cristina alesci and matt harrigan. what are we going to see? >> investors are looking at this stock not as an explosive growth story but as a steady dividend payer like other rivals out there right now paying dividends. that's what's going to be attractive to investors about the story. that said, it still needs to grow topline revenue. you need some growth in this stock but it's not going to cover more people going to theaters. friday -- to come it's going to come from getting more money from the people to go to theaters. >> so my ticket prices are going to go up? >> they hope to provide more services at the theater when you get there. perhaps a bar. >> that would get me there. >> now we are talking. all sweeney, what is amazing to me is that people actually want to go to the movies and watch anything they want to watch on their own tv screen. they can watch anything they want on netflix, why are they paying to go to the theater? >> there are still that community experience of seeing a story along with other people in