while i'm atatt, i want to salute nelson peltz for his persistence in making something happen here. earlier he rebuffed the dupont board after a bitter proxy fight. the stock fell 20 points instantly. he urged viewers to stick with dupont, because he wasn't giving up on pressuring management for i said, stay the course, because peltz has the best track record of any activist we could find. he never wavered. dupont stock's dividends are all the way back to where it was. the bottom line, i say congratulations to all involved who put this deal together. so sorry that the stock market couldn't give you more of an instant reward for your efforts. we have a not so hot tape right now, not much working. but one day, dowdupont will seem like a pretty good darned idea. just don't let that day be when the stock is up substantially from this nasty session where the deal was revealed. "mad money" is back after the break. red 97! set! red 97! did you say 97? yes. you know, that reminds me of geico's 97% customer sasasfaction rating. helped by geico's fast and friendly claims service. huh... oh ye

this merger is a story of activist investors, nelson peltz involved.e was brought in to work out a deal. you attribute this to him? >> certainly. management teams on both sides felt some degree of pressure with the activists. if you take a look at the direction this deal is taking from both company perspectives, when dan came in, he was looking for a breakup as well. as was nelson else. here we are. talk about how long this has been in the works. close to a decade. >> yes. andrew became ceo of dow chemical back in 2005. as he did, in one of the annual reports, tucked away in page 170 or whatever it was was a little talked abouthe had merging the company's. he's been thinking about this for a while. david: thank you very much. wearhouse ismen's starting to unravel after the break, and exclusive interview with the founder and former chairman, george zimmer. ♪ david: welcome back to bloomberg markets. less than two years after by joseph a bank, men's wearhouse is fighting to show it can survive as the market cap has fallen to billion dollars since june of

this activist investor is nelson peltz.pushed for a breakup of dupont and demanded board seats under ceo ellen coleman. rejected by shareholders. mostly index funds, average shareholders, the individuals, the hedge funds voted for him but couldn't beat out overweighting to index funds so he lost. ironically, ellen coleman is blown out in october as ceo, she retired. people say she was prodded out because of poor performance. john breen comes in. liz: ed. >> i'm sorry, ed breen comes in, does the merger and announces a huge breakup. what we understand is that peltz is not advocating for major changes. he likes current management. he is not asking for board seat as of now, and unlikely he will ask for a board seat according to sources close to mr. peltz. we should point out that a spokesman declined to comment as did dupont spokesman. activists are fickle. they change their minds sometime. the inside word from trion, they like what they see, they are not going to ask for a board seat. i know you are giving me the one minute.

now they're clicking and i think in the next couple of years we'll see the kind of growth that nelson peltzt there. they're talking about this being a $50 stock. i'm in for the ride with him and i'm getting 3%. how's that? >> giddy up. >> don't be jelly, grasso. >>> let's move to kinder morgan. they planned to slash dividend. this as kinder morgan has fallen more than 40% in the last month alone. could there be more pain to come? larry macdonald joins us with more. larry, good to have you with us. the dividend went from 51 cents to 12.5 cents paid quarterly. is this going to be enough given what you're sighing in kinder morgan bonds? >> i think so. this will give the bonds a nice bounce here. what's happening kbbehind the scenes is you've got the bondholders versus the stockholders. the bondholders have been lobbying the cfo, cut the dividend. the bondholders won this time. >> in terms of your thoughts on kinder morgan when you've taken apart debt to equity, what's your sense about this company? is it just buying itself a little bit of time. what happens ultimately in your view? >> we don't

put our own board members in there, do a few things, or nelson peltz, i can see him take a long-term view, and not put -- the rumor mill is always that les moonves is going to take over sumner's shot, not sherry redstone, his daughter. we'll see. i'm telling you this is -- liz: this is a major corporate drama and you are all over it. >> ripe for an activist. liz: charlie gasparino, breaking news again. >>> coming up, this is a story you're going to want to watch. the ford assembly line is cranking out cars, could be making cars that don't require a driver. sort of like taxis or ubers without drivers. it's ford's driverless future. that's straight ahead. >>> also chipotle struggling to fix the problems with the supplies, food supply. more people getting sick. our very own jeff flock outside a chipotle in chicago, telling us how its latest health scare could force changes inside the company, jeff? >> reporter: it's fresh, it's locally sourced, but could that be the problem? we'll answer that question at chipotle when we come back. stay tuned. ♪ i built my business with passion. but i k

ed, dupont was harangued by nelson peltz, andrew, you had daniel loeb on dow's back.they may have lost the initial battle, but you say shareholders have won regardless, but that criticism is dupont founded -- and i was looking back in the history -- dupont was founded in 1802, dow in 1897. some would say, at least critics, that you guys have succumbed to short termism to satisfy activists versus long-term, steady success your companies have managed for, or what, a combined 335 years. what do you say to that, andrew? >> okay, i'll give first given you asked me. i think the history is one thing. i think it's been widely reported that we at dow have seen this complementarity for a decade. actually, the deal today is even better than the one we thought about nine or ten years ago. liz, the two companies both have strong franchises. we've been building dow up to have a low-cost position and an innovation engine. you visited our labs in philadelphia. you saw the innovation engine. dupont has that as well. but we have multiple businesses each. so now how do we get together,

i like carl, i respect nelson peltz, but comes a point in time where the activists get in there, corporate ceos if they have any back bone just say take a hike, pal. that's some of the problems with the activists when they put in the ceo, they're beholden to the activists and worried about activism all the time. i can't imagine steve jobs would allow him to spend cash as opposed to tim cook. liz: they listen but they don't -- >> it's out the door, this is my company, i run it. liz: since she took over in 2012. >> we have to point out. they didn't do the spin-off. it was telegraphed last week by recode. she said two things, brilliant reporter when it comes to technology, if you want to know about tech, you got to follow caraswisher. number one said there would be a meeting, number two, they wouldn't spin it off because of the tax implications of spinning off alibaba and collecting that cash, they didn't get a favorable tax ruling from the irs. i would say this, they didn't get a ruling, that was the thing. government didn't rule on it, so the question mark, would they have hit them with the

nelson peltz was at the forefront of the dupont shareholder and they just came out with a statement saying -- it is a long semen so i will not read the whole thing could essentially, they fully support this transformative transactions. there were approach, they say, i du pont and down to sign -- by dupont and dow to sign agreements.ity nelson is certainly happy because he has made quite a bit of money from this, as well as other activist shareholders. brooke: this is really the dream of an activist. you get more scale and more focus of the same time. you are really getting the best of both worlds doing this. it seems like this is definitely something the activists as well as other shareholders are going to like. is it unusual they were brought in so intimately in this transaction? brooke: it was a smart move on dupont's part. you have the proxy fight which got a little vicious. betty: and led to the departure of ellen kullman. just making sure they were on board probably didn't hurt them. you have more expertise to do this. it doesn't make sense what they are doing. it didn't hurt them. be

this year we saw general electric targeted by nelson peltz.nd we tried to look for companies where you had some problems, where the stock is down a fair amount, where you have the potential for portfolio realignment or changes. and where you have management that might be somewhat discredited. and coming through that, and we looked and found this company called caterpillar. you may have heard of it. they make this giant earth-moving machinery. and they did a deal to buy a company, a terrible deal. they make the giant things that look like aardvarks that find iron ore in the bottom of the earth. but they bought it at the wrong time. so aur antenna suggests there might be movement in caterpillar this year. >> we'll see about that one. next one, we want to talk about m&a. because this has been a big year for deal-making, mega-mergers. some of the biggest we've ever seen. you are not expecting it to last. >> i don't think at this level. we're at $4.5 trillion of m&a value this year. a lot of that is driven in the united states where you start to se

nelson peltz has been pushing for this. really sophisticated about how these large conglomerates should not be together and could operate more successfully. david: from an operations point of view, as jason said, we are hoping it is a lot of synergies. but on the cost-cutting side, there is a b i report that suggests they can save as much as $4.5 billion a year. they are talking about a writeup of $780 million. that is a good deal. amazinglys an creative financial structure. we have not seen, as far as i split, twony companies getting together and making three out of it. if there is precedent, i would love to know about it. what is going on at yahoo!, they thought through in advance a lot of these tax issues. so you do not see that downward pressure, what taxes might bring. david: jason, there are a lot of positive things being said about the deal. what is the likelihood that it will go through? what about antitrust challenges and other issues? jason: one of the surprising things about the deal is how little overlap there i

if this happened out in the open during the sessions but i know that you obviously sparred with nelson peltz a very long time. now you're supportive of that transaction? >> i'm very supportive. i think he's one of the most brilliant effective leaders and i don't know an analyst that doesn't agree. >> but you were upset about the activists that were going after dupont originally and now you're supportive of the transaction which was all about ousting her. >> i'm not completely supportive of the transaction. it's a great deal for dow. dupont's board is shameful. it's a suicidal board where they lost their nerve. they should have stood behind coleman doing a fantastic job. and was having a rougher year this year but with one bad quarter, there are 20 ceos who have been on this show in the same period of time westernings misses anywhere to two times to five time what is hers were. >> you don't think this transaction is the right outcome. >> it's the worst time in the history since we have been doing what we're doing to sell ag chemicals. so dupt is coming into this at a low bargaining position.

. >> this has been what nelson peltz's plan, a go of file situation, to lose the proxy and detectivewar here. the more important question is having the experience at the helm. look at stock like this, went from 72 to 47 in october. does of the board react to that and say we don't agree with that but we will do something else any way? that was in 72. >> might be a controversial statement but whack it happens today in boards is they're losing a little bit of the spine. when you see this fluctuation, the ceo under the bus and retain their position, to take on the fight but boards, stock is up, they turn on them pretty quickly. people pull up a chart of that, 4572. >> running the battle but in this end, nelson had it in there and boards need to stand tall and support the people they have been supporting, they approve the budget, the strategic vision and all of a sudden they flip, disappointing. maria: there seem to be so many negative implications, whether it is the chemical part of the business or oil, look at anglo-american, they will cut 85,000 jobs over the next couple years. this in

be --n peltz, stan low >> this is a clear win for them. earlier this year, it looked like nelsonad i lost because he tried to knock out on a lot of the board at dupont and failed. dupont is aunning experience good separating companies out, and that is what he will do now. david: thank you very much. still ahead, pep boys giving bridgestone until friday to top carl icahn's offer. how far are they willing to go? ♪ david: welcome back to "bloomberg markets". i am david gura. pep boys playing hard to get. is it worth the price. with why bridgestone initially was interested in this company. it is a japan-based company. interested in was expanding further into the united states. this company has 2000 service centers in the u.s.. arounds has something 7500 service bays in the u.s.. it would be away for bridgestone to expand its services in the u.s. pretty easily. david: put this into a larger context. other auto-parts companies are doing pretty well right now. >> that's correct. there are a lot of things driving that. the average age of cars is the highest it has been, a love and years.