joining us tonight is erik gordon from the ross school of siness. good to see you again. welcome back. >> hello, bill. >> it is widely believed this kind of a decision could bring on other mergers to get past regulator. do you buy that notion or not? >> you know, i thinkt will make it somewhat easier but i think it is easy to overstate the effect of this case. the judge didn't say something like we should have more media or vertical rgers, he sa in this case the government failed prove what it had to prove. interestingly the judge didn't even say because he didn't need to well this is a case which the government could have won or copt -- or could not have one but all i he said the government failed to convince him. so you don't want to overstate it. but clearly i think we will see more merger attempts. because if the case had gone the other way, it might hav slapped the door on mergers. >> and a vertical merger is where a company buys one of the suppliers and that is what happened with at&t and time warner. and tomorrow we're hearing that comcast will make its bid formal

david: we welcome in erik gordon.e sutherland, bloomberg opinion, list -- columnist. government wanted to go out and make a new president on rd transtions. hasn't actually gone backwards? when you read the judge's decision, it is pretty just about everything theon of government argued. real beat down. the government probably made a mistake on this. if anything, they got the anti-president. -- precedent. the judge basically said, i like this idea, this merger will be a good idea. it is about the worst possible result for the government. what message does that send to ceos out there who might be thinking about a deal? is this encouraging them to pursue m&a deals. we were told some of them were being held up. >> i want to be measured about this, i don't want to overstate it. if you are in an industry that needs the organization, like the media and entertainment industry, then you are encouraged. where the merger horizonta or so-called vertical, if it makes sense for the iustry and the not have anti-competitive effect, yo