Trump Victory Clouds Outlook for Time Warner-AT&T, Other Mergers (reuters.com) 117
U.S. corporate dealmakers were likely to put major merger plans on hold as they assess whether U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will follow through on his populist promises and a threat to block AT&T's purchase of Time Warner, or act more like traditional business-friendly Republican administrations. From the report:Trump's rhetoric and the personal nature of the campaign, which included little discussion of policy, left many uncertain about the new U.S. leader's plans, including how his administration will handle mega-mergers. Wall Street braced for a drop in deals, with Goldman Sachs on Wednesday projecting a 20 to 30 percent downside for earnings of banks that focus on merger and acquisition advice, and Jefferies saying that uncertainty about Trump's policy on trade, healthcare, taxes and energy could hamper underwriting activity and M&A globally. "I think a lot of deals will hit the pause button for a bit until we get some clarity on whether President Trump will moderate or be as disruptive as some expect," said a senior Wall Street banker who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak with the media. "It's going to be a tough environment for everything until we see how [Trump] behaves as a leader," the banker added.
grumpycat-good.jpg (Score:3)
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I agree....
I was reading this headline and thought to myself "Hey, this Trump election already has maybe one good thing result from it so far...
catch & release (Score:2)
Further (Score:4, Interesting)
The media needs to be demonopolized. It is my sincere hope that after 30 years of complaining about a corrupt media we finally have enough of a voice to get the DOJ to address this under the Sherman Act.
Free speech is fine, but propaganda is not the same thing. The MSM in the US has become an arm of the Democratic party and what we used to laugh at in the USSR's Pravda. Worse however, is that people in Russia at least knew beyond any doubt that their media was state run propaganda while many in the US actually believe the reality TV shows are real.
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The media reports life, and life progresses, it rarely regresses. This give the media a progressive slant, like real life. It doesn't come close to comparing to the strict bias and shameless lying of the right wing "media" machine. Fox News is truly the closest thing America hast o Pravda, maybe some of the lunatic fringe like Alex Jones are closer, but they aren't "mainstream"
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Translation: Free speech is fine, except when it says things I don't like, in which case I want government intervention!
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Wrong. Cherry picking your statement, you just said "I don't like government." . See how easy it is to make you look like an anarchist who dislikes the Government? This was being done regularly to one candidate with claims like "He told Russia to hack the US", and "He said he wants Hillary assassinated" by media, and is pure propaganda. That is not free speech, its slander and libel. Which "media" claims they should be immune from because they claim to have "fairness doctrine" and actually let a sente
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By "highest standard of ethics", you mean it is regulated so that you never read anything you don't like in a newspaper or on a big media news site.
Would you also like Breitbarts and Fox regulated? What about asshole bloggers on Wordpress that pass around stories of buses full of black people sent to commit fraud?
I somehow think Trump wont stop any mergers (Score:5, Insightful)
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'Wants" to leave a lasting legacy. The man is a legend and his kids are all highly successful/scandal free. Stop being delusional. Trump is in door kicking mode now. He's the new champion of the people not the big corps.
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"Stop being delusional."
What was the name of your Great Great Grandfather on your mother's side? Virtually everyone has no idea who is beyond their grand parents. And a some don't even know that.
Now, in NY, for example, we can spend a nice day at the Guggenheim then take in a concert at Carnegie Hall. Then maybe see The Tonight Show taped at Rockefeller Center the following day. Name almost any town and there's countless examples that can be listed of people wanting to leave a legacy that had nothing to
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What was the name of your Great Great Grandfather on your mother's side? Virtually everyone has no idea who is beyond their grand parents.
If you're a direct descendant of a POTUS, you probably don't fit that group. And Trump has demonstrated that he cares very much about his children carrying on the family legacy - Presumably for as many generations as possible (at least those that share the family name.)
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"Presumably for as many generations as possible (at least those that share the family name.)"
Be that as it may -- there are countless examples of of people wanting to leave a legacy that had nothing to do with their children.
Given that Trump has named almost everything TRUMP X (Trump Tower, Trump Casino, Trump Hollywood, Trump whatever) I think it's safe to assume he wants a non-biologic legacy to go along with someone running the business with his name.
you forgot the sarcasm tag. (Score:1)
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Trump is a narcissist. He wants to do things that will benefit his ego. That may benefit you and it may not but he is not trying to do anything for some mythical higher purpose, common good or philosophy.
It's Trump, all the way down.
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Not saying that he even could be. But being remembered as the best president since Washington and leading the US into a new golden age would be a major ego stroker.
Re:I somehow think Trump wont stop any mergers (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump truly is a wildcard and nobody really knows what he will actually do in power, but he openly acknowledged the pay-to-play nature of politics and taking advantage of it as a businessman.
But he also said that that was broken and shouldn't be happening, and that one of his strengths was that he was best positioned to fix it because he knew exactly how it was broken as an insider participant.
I think it's certainly possible that he could block anti-competitive mergers based on his campaign rhetoric, and more importantly, the open contempt for him that establishment insiders had for him and his campaign, Republicans included. He doesn't owe those people *anything*, if anything they owe him -- he delivered the White House *and* the downticket vote.
Personally I think it's a mistake to see him as just another big business Republican -- if that was the case, he wouldn't have faced such withering criticism from the Republican establishment and probably wouldn't have run at all. He probably would have just kept writing checks to stooges in DC.
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Much like Obama in 2008. Where he became president with very little political experience granted Trump has less. But when Obama became president people projected their beliefs to him without any facts to show if he would or wouldn't support such actions.
A portion of the Tea Party had voted for Obama, mostly due to Bush starting the bailout only to have Obama continue that broke their trust. Because they figured that he would just naturally be against what the previous administration did.
Trump Voters seeme
Re:I somehow think Trump wont stop any mergers (Score:4, Informative)
Obama had a long record(elected in politics in 1997), well as long as it was counted as "here" in the legislative house in Illinois. No, Obama had a history, he was in politics before coming president. Trump on the other hand has no political history, in turn doesn't even have the political ties that someone like Obama did at a state level.
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What are you talking about? Reagan was in no way a "political outsider" by any reasonable definition, by the time he started holding any significant office. As far back as the '40s, he was visibly active in politics. Before he was governor of California he'd been SAG President, which is certainly a political position, just not a public-sector one. In the early '60s he was a prominent political commentator and policy wonk (and we've known for years now that he did, in fact, do his own research and analysis).
Trump is out for Trump (Score:2)
But he also said that that was broken and shouldn't be happening, and that one of his strengths was that he was best positioned to fix it because he knew exactly how it was broken as an insider participant.
Anyone who believe he actually can or will do anything about this is naive to the point of being retarded. Trump will game this to his own best advantage and seek to help his own enterprises and cronies profit. To believe otherwise is idiotic.
I think it's certainly possible that he could block anti-competitive mergers based on his campaign rhetoric, and more importantly, the open contempt for him that establishment insiders had for him and his campaign, Republicans included. He doesn't owe those people *anything*, if anything they owe him -- he delivered the White House *and* the downticket vote.
That's the scary thing. He doesn't owe much so we don't know his motivations. It also means he doesn't have much incentive to actually listen to anyone. For a guy that was openly endorsed by the KKK that's more than a little frightening.
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Anyone who believe he actually can or will do anything about this is naive to the point of being retarded. Trump will game this to his own best advantage and seek to help his own enterprises and cronies profit. To believe otherwise is idiotic.
That's the scary thing. He doesn't owe much so we don't know his motivations. It also means he doesn't have much incentive to actually listen to anyone. For a guy that was openly endorsed by the KKK that's more than a little frightening.
If we don't know his motivations, how do you "know" that he will use the Presidency to game his own business interests?
I guess I'm more on the side where he doesn't seem to have motivation to get rich (he's already rich) nor does he have the motivation to need to impress anyone or curry favor -- he amply demonstrated that in this election, even when it appeared suicidal to do so, such as insulting the Republican party when he (supposedly) needed its ground operation to have *any* chance at defeating Hillary
The Trump Brand (Score:3)
If we don't know his motivations, how do you "know" that he will use the Presidency to game his own business interests?
How do I know a guy who has spent a lifetime focused on making money and plastering his name on everything he can, bragging about how rich he is and how he games the system, and turning himself into a brand will pursue his own interests? You have to be an idiot to think he would do anything else. Maybe he'll surprise us all but I very much doubt it.
I guess I'm more on the side where he doesn't seem to have motivation to get rich (he's already rich) nor does he have the motivation to need to impress anyone or curry favor
Rich people always want to get richer. There never seems to be a limit where enough is enough. And he now can perfectly legally engage in insider trading ju
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There are dozens of things they could do.
But we know they won't. They will make moves to consolidate their power and prevent others from taking seats from them. Otherwise, it's business as usual, let the palm greasing and ass kissing commence.
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Anyone who believe he actually can or will do anything about this is naive to the point of being retarded. Trump will game this to his own best advantage and seek to help his own enterprises and cronies profit. To believe otherwise is idiotic.
Not everyone is a Clinton, you know.
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So we should just ignore the "benefits" his businesses got from his campaign because he's somehow has this mystical belief others shouldn't do it?
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Re:I somehow think Trump wont stop any mergers (Score:4, Interesting)
There is something to this. A long time ago domain names started being sold for about $5/yr instead of ~$100/yr. Shortly after, around the mid-90s when NCSA Mosaic (the first web browser) came out, I was playing with it and browsing the few websites which existed. A labmate asked if I wanted to see a movie. We tried calling the theater to find out what was playing (that was what you did in those days - the theater set up a line with a recording of the movies and playtimes), but kept getting a busy signal. Then it occurred to me that this was Boston and the nearby businesses were pretty up to date with the latest technology. Maybe the theater had a website with playtimes. So I did a bit of searching (Yahoo was more or less a topically-sorted bulletin board back then) but couldn't find any movie theater sites.
.com domain matching their trademarked company name, and were refusing to release it unless they were paid large amounts of money. Likewise, some small people had legitimately registered and been using a domain [nissan.com], only to have some big corporation try to bully them into giving it up. ICANN was going to hold meetings and discussions about how best to resolve these domain name disputes. I had my noble opinion of course, but I was a nobody in the domain name business. I was not invited. My friend, unscrupulous though he was, was a big player - he was invited.
Frustrated, I remarked to my friend that someone should just buy the domain movies.com, collect theater locations and movie playtimes, and put them on a single site to make this easy for everyone. Then it occurred to me - *I* could do that. The thought played in my head for about 10 seconds, before I decided that, no, it wouldn't be proper for me to do it. Someone in the movie or movie theater business should be the one to do that. That was their business, their turf, and I had no right to encroach on it and take a potential web-based ease of access (not to mention money-making) opportunity away from them. My domain was ocean sciences and robotics.
Fast forward a decade. I found out that a friend I hadn't seen since we were kids also had stumbled upon the same idea around the same time. He's a good guy, well principled, but was more unscrupulous than I when it came to business. He didn't have any qualms about grabbing any available domain name to be put to use as an indexing site (i.e. landing page) where he got click-through ad revenue. He'd collected something like a hundred thousand common word and common phrase domains, and built it into a multi-million dollar business.
Around the same time, there was growing frustration about domain name squatting. Some big corporations were upset that someone had grabbed a
The point is really driven home if you've ever tried to do business in Asia. The corruption there is so rampant (or at least was a decade ago) that you simply can't do business legitimately. If you try to stick to your principles, you'll just go out of business. You have to pay the bribes if you want to get anywhere. I ran into a similar thing while helping a friend in Chicago deal with some legal trouble about a building he owned. Turns out a lot of the government officials and inspectors there expect bribes. Don't pay them, and they will sink you with delays, violations, and fines. That's what had gotten my friend in trouble - he refused to pay bribes out of principle. (I resolved it by having him hire a law firm to "deal with" the "paperwork", and they paid the requisite bribes.)
This is not to say Trump will be some savior who will fix this corruption. I'm skeptical he is, but I'm not going to dismiss his claim out of hand. I'm willing to wait and see what happens. I'm just saying that it's true that sometimes you have to get your hands dirty playing the game in order to know how it's played and what needs fixing.
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One of the advantages of Trump's many, many horrible scandals seems to be that people have a hard time keeping track.
Trump's deputy campaign manager (and high on the list for Chief of Staff) is David Bossie, the former president of Citizen United, the organization that won the infamous SCOTUS decision that allowed SuperPACs and created politics as it is today, with virtually unlimited money flowing into politics. Something we would call "Swamp". Basically Trump railed against the 'swamp', while hiring the g
Re:I somehow think Trump wont stop any mergers (Score:4, Informative)
Mergers (Score:3)
Trump had to skirt some horrid regulations.
Not sure which regulations you are referring to but whichever they are they were horrid in his opinion. Not an opinion that is universally shared. Regulations usually exist for a reason and getting rid of regulations just because the are inconvenient for Donald Trump isn't enough of a reason.
I too, doubt he will do anything bad for the economy.
Based on what? You have NO idea what he's going to do. Nobody does. Most of the crap that has come out of his mouth has been ill-considered if not outright harmful and he changes positions more often than most peop
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Unless he manages to start a trade war with China, helps hand the Russian back their empire so that it leans on Europe pushes them around, screws with trade in the Western Hemisphere now that much of it is interlocking, decides to force companies to make their stuff in the U.S. so they say "screw it" and set up shop in Ireland.
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Re: I somehow think Trump wont stop any mergers (Score:2)
Not centuries. Truman was a businessman.
Net Neutrality, monopoly, and trump (Score:2)
I'd say it's possible it could go to either way. People enmeshed in any situation often become cynical about it's shortcomings and have positive ideas how they'd reform it if only they had the power to do so. Trump and warren buffet both know, and have said so eliptically, that they get away with a lot on tax returns at the same but wanting to close those rules for everyone inclduding themselves.
As for the AT&T merger this is just one beachhead in a protracted battle of media concentration. What I'
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Why does every idiot bring this up? (Score:2)
Rhetoric wins elections but actions speak louder than words. Trump spent his entire career having to skirt around regulations to get things done so I highly doubt he's going to do anything that gets in the way of business doing whatever it wants to do, including performing anti-competitive mergers.
It's like if two people were fighting, and Bob said, "I'd rather have a fistfight than a gun fight." Then Charlie responds with, "That's fine you use your fists and I'll use my gun." This is where all the idiots who insist that actions always speak louder than words that Bob has to fight fists against gun because otherwise he's a hypocrite and if he really meant what he said about preferring a fistfight he must be willing to do that. The same with business, which is similarly a competition and you have to t
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I hope that Trump blocks it... (Score:2)
For the good of everyone, I hope he blocks it...
However, given that it is part way done and that Trump will be REALLY, REALLY busy the first 100 days, it may simply be too far down his RADAR screen to be an issue.
There is a limit to the bandwidth of any human being, Trump has NAFTA, ACA, and a thousand other things to worry about before the AT&T deal...
Trump will be for it.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Assuming it comes with $1 million in cash delivered by a naked supermodel. As long as he gets what he wants, his morals are for sale.
Re:Trump will be for it.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone has a price. But many of us just don't know what it is yet.
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Everyone has their price, but I'm pretty sure that's a comically low offer.
If you want to look at pay-to-play scheming though, I'm pretty sure the other side of the fence has plenty of experience.
And beyond that, Trump doesn't need $1m. He owns more than enough and a growing economy in general will continue growth of his personal fortune. Real estate is one of the safest long-term bets ever ... and it grows with the general economy. So even if one wants to believe he's personally motivated, the greater g
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You mean he SAYS he owns a lot. Right now, no one knows what he's worth, maybe we should take his word on it since he's such a straight-shooter.
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He has that much between seat cushions (Score:2)
He has that much between seat cushions at the Trump tower. And he's married to a former model. So do us all a favor, and take your liberal bullshit elsewhere. One of the candidates made a hundred million dollars selling influence. That's an unassailable, verified fact. I'll leave it to you to figure out which candidate that is.
Whether you love or hate him (Score:3)
You have to admit: Trump is the first president in memory who isn't carrying debt to Wall Street or other big business into the White House. His career thus far has been as the puppeteer, not the puppet. I hope he fucks up Comcast and AT&T good and hard.
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what else is he going to fuck up along the way?
Yesterday morning I overheard my babyboomer former flower children fauxsocialist parents talking to one of my siblings warning them to get out of the US because trump is planning on building concentraion camps as his first act will be to take control of the congress. HFS, They were almost to the point of tears and 100% believe this.
It's like all of the rightwing nutjobs conspiracy theories (FEMA deathcamps) didn't have anywhere to go and became leftwing nutjob conspiracy theories overnight
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It's fucking amazing, isn't it? For far too long conspiracy theory spouting nutjobs were the sole province of far-right ideologues and derided as ignorant hicks. It is a great win for equality that both sides are now heeding the siren call of hysterical paranoid thinking.
LWNJ's have finally reached the mainstream. I guess all that education doesn't really change much about human nature after all. Funny that.
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Really? We don't know who he has debt to - and probably a lot more than any president every. Because he doesn't release financial statements. There may be thick ropes controlling this puppet.
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Um, maybe you forgot this exchange from the first Presidential debate:
CLINTON: Third, we don't know all of his business dealings, but we have been told through investigative reporting that he owes about $650 million to Wall Street and foreign banks. Or maybe he doesn't want the American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he's paid nothing in federal taxes, because the only years that anybody's ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn't pay any federal income tax.
TRUMP: That makes me smart.
CLINTON: So if he's paid zero, that means zero for troops, zero for vets, zero for schools or health. And I think probably he's not all that enthusiastic about having the rest of our country see what the real reasons are, because it must be something really important, even terrible, that he's trying to hide.
[snip]
TRUMP: As far as my tax returns, you don't learn that much from tax returns. That I can tell you. You learn a lot from financial disclosure. And you should go down and take a look at that.
The other thing, I'm extremely underleveraged. The report that said $650 -- which, by the way, a lot of friends of mine that know my business say, boy, that's really not a lot of money. It's not a lot of money relative to what I had.
The buildings that were in question, they said in the same report, which was -- actually, it wasn't even a bad story, to be honest with you, but the buildings are worth $3.9 billion. And the $650 isn't even on that. But it's not $650. It's much less than that.
But I could give you a list of banks, I would -- if that would help you, I would give you a list of banks. These are very fine institutions, very fine banks. I could do that very quickly.
I am very underleveraged. I have a great company. I have a tremendous income. And the reason I say that is not in a braggadocios way. It's because it's about time that this country had somebody running it that has an idea about money.
Maybe you should read more? (Score:4, Insightful)
Trump may owe money on loans to various banks - but they are LOANS he has to repay.
Hillary was "given" money from all of the largest corporations, and may foreign nations, given outright... her "repayment" was going to be be very different indeed....
Trump only owes them money, what Hillary owed them would have been paid in our tears.
Also why would you think Trump would be MORE lenient on banks to whom he owes money? Why would he not instead be one of their biggest critics having to deal with them to get money for projects the same way the rest of us do.
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And here you are complaining about the one running who doesn't have a history of taking bribes for setting US policy.
Did you actually read my post?
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there's a difference between owing money and selling yourself.
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He's such a puppeteer that no American banks will lend him any more dough, something about getting screwed in the past too often.
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Are you making the argument that a pimp is less corrupt than a whore?
Time-Warner/AT&T would've been tough regardles (Score:1)
The Democrats would've looked at it pretty skeptically if they were still in charge. It's obviously a bad deal for consumers.
As for Trump, I suspect he'll be very friendly to big business, same as Dubya, with the notable exception of companies and deals that he campaigned against (the auto industry, Time-Warner/AT&T). Supporting big business is what Republican presidents do. They talk about it in populist terms though ("Get government off the backs of the people... I'm going to lower your taxes" etc)
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MEGACORPS ARE GOOD! (Score:3, Funny)
If Slashdot has taught me anything in the past 48 hours, it's that anything and everything about Trump is worse than Hitler.
Mega mergers between cable companies that Trump doesn't like? Obviously this means mega-corps are our new friends and opposing them means you hate women and minorities.
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The real break is all around the eye of the storm (Score:2)
Read your own post again, then remember the phrase "Physician - heal thyself".
I see plenty of psychosis all around, but very little from Trump. I see people claiming that someone who wanted to back off NATO commitments is somehow more of warmonger than the person who literally started the Libyan war... if that's not a break from reality I don't know what is.
I see the first Republican president who openly advocated for gay marriage (and was cheered for it as the Republican convention) being somehow a step b
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Oh yes there is psychosis, and I hope it will pass. But for many I fear they are now lost within their own minds whatever happens, and they will sadly withdraw from humanity as a result.
And the best part is they will be barraging us with their hysterical paranoid delusions for at least the next four years.
If you're the trolling sort you can have a ball writing satirical LWNJ posts and expect them voted up through the roof. The more whack-a-doodle, the better. Just natter on about how the Right Wing Death Squads will be exterminating every type of minority and burning the bodies in the streets. Drawing inspiration from his mentor Mr. Putin, Trump will soon be unilaterally outlawing homos
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What good do M&As do? (Score:2)
Do they increase RnD? Create more jobs? Develop new product lines? What do they do besides create a flurry of activity for managers, accountants, and brokers?
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Do they increase RnD? Create more jobs? Develop new product lines? What do they do besides create a flurry of activity for managers, accountants, and brokers?
Yes, no, no, profit
Mergers are great for making more profit and streamlining an industry. Why conduct two separate RnD lines for very similar tech when you could run both on the same equipment with only a minor increase in staffing? In theory, a larger company has more ability to invest and research things that would bankrupt a smaller one. There ARE benefits to mergers. Unfortunately the primary benefit companies are looking for is increased profits/reduced expense and thus greater stock price.
'Rhetoric and little discussion of policy' (Score:2)
The complete annihilation of the entire leftist agenda and policy proves you wrong. You just didn't listen to him, the tens of thousands that went to every one of his rallys did.
Sorry.
It's dead in the water (Score:4, Interesting)
He'll Do Nothing (Score:2)
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It's not up to Trump to decide much (Score:2)
Trump-Behave association (Score:2)
I noticed a lot of associations during the election period between the words "Trump" and "behave", used in the same story/article/etc. Post-election, they seem to be more closely spaced; same paragraph, same sentence. Just thought I'd throw the psychology out there for whoever wants to give a few brain cycles over the media/social associative narrowing of distance, aforementioned.
Re:I'm glad Trump won!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Low information voters for the win!
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Totally.
That's why Trump relied exclusively on vapid celebratory endorsements and bread & circuses concerts to lure in stupid voters who didn't know any better.
Just look at all those late night comedians who were bought & paid for to support Trump and trash Hillary! It's outrageous!
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It is a shame that you felt that you had to post that as A/C. I find it interesting that the media frenzy has made admitting support from Trump something that many will not do. This probably contributed to the 'surprise' victory and why polsters got it wrong.
I am a Brit, I did not have a vote.
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It is true that many will die from the Iranian nuclear bombs that Obama enabled, but they will probably kill a few million Isralies first.