what does this mean for john legere? >> he really has taken a no-namebrand, in my view, and turned it into something quite cool. he has a lot of followers on twitter. they have denigrate job with advertising. frankly, in terms of just branding, t-mobile, the genius behind it is john legere. >> when you put a black leather jacket on i guess it makes it cool. who are potential buyers? >> they are limited. this price is outrageous. iliad might not be a buyer. they don't have the financial resources. >> for $35 a share? >> we are talking about $18.7 billion to do a deal like this. as cheap as money is right now, it might be hard for them to get this. they already have an enormous amount of debt. it is not out of the question that they could have more, but presently the company has borrowed a lot of money. you can't just add more debt. >> the question is, can they continue to grow prescribers? -- grow subscribers? everybody thinks that is not really possible, except john legere, who claims he can keep doing it. john butler, w

earlier today i spoke to ceo john legere minutes before iliad's bid was reported about all the optionsn the table, and their recent subscriber growth. >> as you know in q1 we announced contract freedom. it was the launch of paying early termination fees, something we will do. that caused an aggressive spike. amongst other things we did today, we raised our guidance for postpaid subscribers for the year, now saying we will be between 3 million and 3.5 million. further evidence we feel very confident that our momentum will continue throughout the rest of the year. >> i wonder about that contract freedom. you are enabling more customers to have no contract, to buy the phones upfront. does that mean you are seeing less customers buying the expensive phones, the iphones and samsung galaxies, and are you selling more mid and lower tier phones? >> actually, you have to go back -- you and i have had this conversation before. the uncarrier movement, which is focused on solving pain points for customers -- we want 100% no contract. customers love it. anytime upgrade. international data roaming f

we will consider any option that exist for the shareholders. > my interview with ceo john legere.mazon is known for being secretive. the company has gone public with its side of the story in its ongoing ebooks price issue. will this lead the two sides to an agreement? we discuss next on the best of "bloomberg west." ♪ >> welcome back to the best of "bloomberg west". i'm emily chang. the battle over e-book prices with amazon and hachette group takes a new turn. amazon said the company's key object sieve to lower e-book prices. arguing if the books were priced at $9.99, there would be more room for sales. what does the publishing industry and authors have to say about the proposal? i spoke with mark coker. and a self-published author. i started by asking hugh who has been a supporter of amazon throughout this dispute what he thought of the company's latest response. > i'm happy that amazon is finally talking about what their negotiation terms are. it confirms everything i suspected just from watching the company over the years and dealing with them as an author and publisher. they w

shirt -- >> john legere -- >> work for sprint? >> this is a september conversation. >> those are our front page stories. >> our top story, the geopolitics of the summer. not iraq or syria, ukraine and russia. 1000 russianer troops on two fronts, donetsk 0 miles south. hans nichols is in berlin, ms. merkel is front and center. what will chancellor angela merkel say to mr. putin in the next conversation? >> she will ask for clarity. merkel, at the beginning, she was a translator and an interlocutor. now she's become a critic of putin. does thaton is, undermine her ability to broker

that's what i do when i play golf, at least. >>> we mentioned john legere tweeting a moment ago about the als challenge, ice bucket challenge, so many people are learning about quickly. here's legere. take als challenge to new level and get ceos to pledge cash. i commit $100,000 and ask you to find nine to join in. >> are these nine additional ceos? we have zuckerberg. we have twitter's costolo. >> at&t's ralph day la vagde la well. most say contradicted money. could be getting there. we'll see. >> henry, put a word in with bezos? hard to reach. >> absolutely. chambers is on later. ask him, and others. >> we certainly will. ask everyone we can get our hands on. for all ceos, a call to you. $100,000 from john legere, should you participate. >> henry, good to see you. >> great to be here. >> business insider. >>> the president announced he will speak at 12:15 p.m., in about 45 minutes. in edgartown, massachusetts. not a lot of detail what he'll say what the statement is about, but we'll certainly when he speaks at a quarter after noon eastern time we'll bring that to you live. >>> when

. >> i just spoke with john legere earlier this week, the colorful ceo of t-mobile.sked him if the sprint deal did not happen, what are other options, what about dish? this is what he had to say. >> i've been very consistent. i will not comment on any specific transactions of the company, never have. i've always been consistent that in the long term, if i really want to bring in long-term competition and lead this entire industry in the u.s., sales are important, capital is important. and one of those things could be a transaction in organically of some type. i've always said we have multiple options. in the short-term, what i have pointed out is that wanted to native lee and qualitatively, this company is hitting on all cylinders and we have a great runway. we have multiple options to accelerate being a carrier. we have been consistent in that all along. >> if it happens, you're the guy in charge. if it doesn't happen, you're the guy who has to figure out what to do. what else is in the spectrum, dish? >> you know that with a transaction or without a transaction, i'

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john leger marched in with his old team from t-mobile. i met with him about this a few weeks ago. out for drinks with macklemore. the discussion was about how this plan to turnaround team of your -- t-mobile and change the telecom industry in the u.s. was something they worked on before they marched in the door. he came in with his team reviving this company forcing the other carriers to respond. >> if you follow john leger on , i suggest you do if you like swearwords. he has pushed this narrative he does not need to merge with sprint. he is going to be the boss of the new sprint employees. >> he behaves like a guy who does not feel like he has to. in may said wen cannot compete with softbank on t-mobile. we don't have the money for it. dishes a $32 billion company. compete, but maybe he can and does not want to reveal strategy. >> we have to leave it there. out sherman and cory johnson -- alex sherman and cory johnson. >> when we come back, republican versus republican on capitol hill, fighting about what to do about immigration. ♪ >> we are approaching 26 minutes past the hour.

we thought the ceo of the merged company would be john leger, t-mobile's ceo. the writing was on the wall that dan hesse he was going to step down. it is not a surprise that regulators did not like this deal. that has not been a surprise since day one. >> did we have any sense of what the plan b was going to be for sprint? drop prices orer invest in new infrastructure to expand the network. do we have any sense of which they are going to choose? >> not yet. sprint is going to have to lay out their plan b at this point. there is a plan c i suppose. they could do some sort of partnership with another company. i know that dish network has that they would love to do some sort of network hosting, sharing, and have them pair up mobile and video, similar to what at&t is trying to do with directv. quickly, we have craig moffett with us in the next hour. is this a massive victory for theington in just saying to entire industry, listen to us carefully, we want competition? think it probably is, particularly in the backdrop of comcast-time warner cable, and att-directv. b

i will admit to being charmed by the t-mobile ceo, john leger.r -- you talk to wall street investors all the time. guy traipsing around in a t-shirt -- how is that playing out in wall street? >> it is certainly a change from traditional telecom executives we have known. tweeting and wearing magenta t-shirts and things like this. it is definitely a different look. it is resonating with customers. he has done a lot of things to shake up the industry. you see at&t and verizon and probably soon spreads reacting aggressively to the price moves he has made. it has frankly lowered the price of the industry. it is shaking things up quite a bit. >> what is the single biggest change? >> unfortunately, he has proved there is price elasticity in u.s. wireless. >> could hurt the profits. >> sure, and it is a scale business. you need spectrum, network utilization, network assets. these require cash flow. to the extent that you continue to have somebody chipping away the price points, the return on capital as an industry is worse than it was just a year ago. >>

with aknow that transaction or without a transaction, i'm hugely in favor of john legere being in chargeanything. that is my position and always has been. >> what a knucklehead, that guy. >> i love it. what other options are there? didn't talk about selling the business. he didn't talk about walking away from the business. he is talking about ways to make t-mobile grow. >> and being in charge. >> and being in charge. look at. if someone wants to step into a situation, it could be a situation where they borrow so cannot do where they an acquisition without building out t-mobile's network. and sprint as a competitor will make it harder for t-mobile to grow and to get coverage where they want to get coverage. there are other ways to do this, but there are fewer ways for them to acquire spectrum and get your. they will have to grow organically, and that will take boatloads of cash. >> and we do have a quotation from charlie, something he just said. the sprint announcement has just increased some of the option now the that we had. a lot happened in the last 24 hours. he added that t-mobile co

as for t-mobile, ceo john legere blasting sprint on twit perp an example. t-mobile now and jump off the sprint bus before it crashes" harb friendly, #unleashed. tweets go from there. that stock trading down 3% today. back to you. >> thanks, morgan brennan. >>> many, many of -- it'sest tring what his social media strategy is, the ceo of t-mobile. >> you wonder what it is, right? for me, i don't own t-mobile, if i did, i would prefer to not have the ceo going out on twitter with comments like that. i think it's -- childish. >> sprint has a long haul ahead of it. i do. pricing, not competitive with the rest of the industry. have to spend $4 billion, nor need that to build out their network, have to kwcome to the network. i'm for value, but not sure this is it. now a new ceo probably will take a long time to figure what needs to be done. >> and without experience returning a wireless operator. >> right. a soft bank guy. >> right. exactly. he met two years ago trying to sell or get investor for his company, used phone company. >> not impressive bounce when you c

not clear the end game for john legere, but changing things a lot. >> of course, waiting to hear -- >> you've got two deals. basically you have the sprint/t-mobile deal, dragged out. and the fox deal, quick and left. i don't quite understand why rupert walked away so quickly. everybody was convinced he would play hard and try to close it. i don't think it's diversionary, but i'm baffled. >> legere said, lots of possibilities in this universe. waiting to hear, on today's earnings call, begins at noon. but back in may he discussed the possibility of a t-mobile bid. >> t-mobile is sprint, to make a decision on, we just can't compete in that process. they'd have a lot of synergy and there's logic to what, why they would want to go after t-mobile. looks like a tough regulatory hurdle based on what people have said. you could go broke betting or washington. if, in fact, sprint didn't proceed or denied, t-mobile would have strategic interest, yes. >> see if they make a move. fcc's tom wheeler says he thinks it's a good thing for them to abandon this that the fcc would have been busy with all

. -- john legere. ofthis is the battle disruptors right now between sprint and t-mobile.rs probably will be on the short end of the stick that a great situation for consumers because they both have advocated price cutting. idea of the his price cut sprint came out with. offering 10 and 20 gigabytes of data for very low price. the average consumer cannot use more than one .5. who does that? teenagers. splints network operates about half the speed and most of the country to everybody else's. if you can get it. 20 gigabytes of data on the sprint network. >> can you afford these plans? cutting prices against one another to compete. sprint of those, especially needs capital. they have to build out the network. they need billions of dollars and are losing customers. sprint is probably going to fall between now and the end of the year to number four, which is gaining t-mobile. this is a fixed cost business. devastating,e is particularly when they're going through an investment cycle, which is friends at the moment. >> trying to get our attention with the of noxious tweets. is he

. >> we actually just hard from john legend -- john leger.arently doesn't have a lot to say about the aborted deal. instead he says ice cream that turns magenta when you lick it. we need this in the dispensary in my office. that is what he had to say. he just wants ice cream that turns magenta. backg up, alex rodriguez in the headlines. this time his supporting cast facing allegations. ♪ >> you are watching "market makers." it has been a nerve-racking 24 hours for a lot of row athletes. yesterday around this time anthony bosch, the man at the center of baseball's biggest their ward scandal was arrested and charged with distributing their words to professional and amateur athletes, some of which -- some of which to let high school. he has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and a wider investigation. this is the man who has already brought down alex rodriguez by admitting he provided him with performance-enhancing drugs. are joined now by an analyst at espn. great to have you back on our show. how nervous should days ball players and for that

to john leger was speaking bloomberg earlier before this came out, the chief executive of t-mobile u.sneed capital, we need to invest. he wants the deal to go his way as well. >> peer speculation. indeed. you very much >> very confusing. i/o is wished i was pronounced caroline. -- i always wished. latest us with the coming out of the french market. flat. hours, jobs stay in america. predicting slow labor gains in the next month. ♪ >> welcome back. let's talk about what is happening in the currency market. trajectory.m i think the chart tells you what is going on. strength coming through. the perception we will start to get more strong data coming through. the data generally good coming out of the u.s. economy but good enough to get the fed moving? another thing i want to draw your attention to, take a look at the right-hand side of the chart. we're seeing it in volatility as well. just beginning to pick up. maybe things are starting to happen a little bit. a lot to get through over the next week or so. investors looking for clues out of the non-form payrolls number. this 230 is the num

am not a t-mobile customer hisid john legere -- stock was trading north of $34, thanks in large partat reporting. with share agreement little hope of going up on -- hing other >> in the near term i do not expect t-mobile to be popping anytime soon. there is a possibility the french government can boost your offer. they are still periodically involved here. that might be the first near-term step. >> thank you. covering m&a. >> the big headline, no consumer. adam johnson joins us with a little insight and action on where the consumer is. dowe're going to try to later in the next hour is try to figure out how bad it is and whether there are any other companies that might present some problems. >> a lot. into earnings reporting season. the news cannot of macy's -- disappointing earnings, foot have seenhe worst we in about 16 weeks, declined for the 16th week and it grow. cole's, nordstrom, and walmart report tomorrow. estimates?ts lowered >> the bifurcation. >> adam johnson is quite the artist. ♪ >> that wraps it up for "market makers," erik, you don't play candy crush. >> and i do not c

picturnkguy with the shirt -- >> john legere -- >> work for sprint? >> this is a september conversation. >> those are our front page stories. >> our top story, the geopolitics of the summer. not iraq or syria, ukraine and russia. 1000 russianer troops on two fronts, donetsk 0 miles south. hans nichols is in berlin, ms. merkel is front and center. what will chancellor angela merkel say to mr. putin in the next conversation? >> she will ask for clarity. merkel, at the beginning, she was a translator and an interlocutor. now she's become a critic of putin. does thaton is, undermine her ability to broker some sort of diplomatic solution? that might be a moot point. when you look at southeastern ukraine, diplomacy seems a far way off. there is going to be a lot more fighting before there is any resolution. >> in the last 24 hours, more headlines about nato. does nato have any power here? do, nato cancan assure other allies along russia's western front. estoniamove troops into and into poland. their will because for that. they have some and and emergency me