last-minute competition coming from the other billionaire, patrick draghi.k for a second bid. they offered about a year ago to buy time warner cable. the price wasn't right. we saw comcast swoop in and that merger suddenly gained momentum. it was blocked off because of regulatory concerns. number one and number two players not sitting well with regulators. chartered gets the second bite over the cherry. interestingly, chartered communications is already combining and buying. they are still negotiating over the terms of that particular deal. we understand about $10 billion. it would be joining forces of the number two player, the number four player and the number six player. really interesting and quite con volume luted deal going on. it is what they are able to offer and why they are going to be able to knock back patrick draghi's offer. john malone is the big est shareholder in chartered communications. he is actually going to be helping fund this deal, to the tune of about $5 billion buying up shares of time warner cable. al's the has more debt on its book

the first thought i had when i was reading all the article's yesterday and today, who is patrick draghir of those names resonate much with u.s. consumers. patrick has built up a large telecom and cable business in europe. this is his first step into the u.s. cable market. he is entering the u.s. cable a lot of a time of chaos, ever since comcast's deal with time warner cable last month fell through, all the smaller companies are trying to jockey for position. charter is interested in buying time warner cable. we also reported that there is a bid for time warner cable. from a regulatory standpoint, who has the better case? i'll tease or charter? -- altice or charter? cory: inasmuch as the fcc or ftc is concerned about the control over content of larger cable operations -- even the time warner comcast deal did not have a geographic overlap but it would have given one company a big say in what kind of content gets out there to most cable subscribers in the world released in this country. altice does not have that problem exactly in the u.s. u.s. regulators are having a hard time making the

now, as you mentioned, patrick draghi is a big european player and now eyeing up time warner we understandthis could be $44 billion it would have to pay out to time warner. a significant deal. what is interesting is time warner is also being circled by another player. that is charter communications which is owned by another billionaire. time warner is being eyed up not once, but twice. meanwhile, charter communications which is eyeing up time warner is also looking at bright house which is the sixth cable player in the u.s. still altis is looking at suddenly which is the seventh biggest. mark: he has a big appetite. caroline: the first combination is altis and time warner, the second is charter communications and time warner. the fourth is charter and bright house. this is a frenzy. it is being redraw in the united states. he wants to get into the u.s. before it changes and whoever the dominant players are. notably, it is because people are changing. they are making less money and have more fierce competition from amazon, netflix, new players. how do you take this? manus: there have been c

you look at a $9 billion price tag, actually patrick draghi is known for getting out on his bicycle. billion worth of cash. the rest has to be leveraged. the thing is this is a frenzy going on in the united states. time warner and comcast, too much competition. that deal unraled last month. suddenly you have got the number seven -- geting with altice and then chartered communications looking at bright house, the number six player. it then could merge with time warner or altice could merge with time warner. suddenly you have all of these players coming in, all of these different deals. they are being disrupted. you have amazon coming in with production. netflix coming in. these huge cable companies have to work out what do you consolidate to survive? guy: i want to talk about bananas and vodafone in just a second. >> i think you do look at john malone as being by far the likeliest candidate. altice and a time warner deal at this stage is an immense longshot. we're really talking about an extremely low probability event on the other hand, charter has a professed and demonstrated intere