that is michelle davis with bloomberg news. options trading growth is breaking records.m is responding with a whole new exchange. details on that, next. this is bloomberg. ♪ sonali: this is "bloomberg markets." the equities exchange is entering the options market with its own exchange. brian harkins is leading the charge and here today. we are also joined katherine doherty who has been covering the story for bloomberg news. first talk about why you are doing this. there is a cost to building the infrastructure. what is the big opportunity for you? >> thank you for having me on. we looked into the entry into the market. what is driving it is the unprecedented growth in the industry driven by retail activity. it is one of the fastest growing asset classes in the world. option market volumes have tripled over the last decade. two, i think what we built and our obsession over market quality is driving our entrance. third is that success starts with people. we have built an amazing team with a great foundation. we just brought in two of the best exchange experts for options.

for more, bloomberg's michele davis joins us.ion subscribers on one side and 8 million on the other? >> this is a deal that is a long time coming. they attempted the merger in the past. it seems like the planets are lining -- a. the way we view content has changed completely. cable, satellite. now streaming has taken over. a deal like this is about survival. ed: reading your story it sounds like it is close to getting over the line from a deal perspective. michelle: it has been an off-and-on situation for more than two decades. there are a couple things that had to happen recently for it to be the perfect time. we are hearing the deal could be announced as soon as monday. some of those include tpg and at&t. as part of the deal this truck there was a provision that said at&t could not exit its 70% stake until this past summer. now that that has passed it gives directv the corporate governance and ability to do something like this. on the dish side, the billionaire the controls the company has been dealing with issues on the debt s

let's discuss all of this with michelle davis. you were ahead of the curve on this.his is why at&t was not moving much, because we anticipated this offloading of directv. talk about what they are creating here by merging the companies. michelle: as you said, long time coming. the news came out this morning through a series of press releases, filings. dish and directv will combine. directv is acquiring dish to form the biggest pay-tv provider in the u.s. directv is paying one dollar in equity and then assuming $10 billion of dish debt in order to acquire the business. as part of that, directv has to get dish bondholders to take a haircut on some of their debt. if this goes through, it will mean a stronger balance sheet behind those lenders that are agreeing to this, but the bondholders have to agree to take the haircut. caroline: that is why some of these bond prices are significantly under pressure today. echostar meanwhile is going more into the infrastructure side, 5g , selling $5 billion worth of stock. there is some of the outstanding debt involved in this exchan