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Thursday, February 13, 2014

This Is What Makeup Can Do

Emma Allen puts your average Sephora shopper to absolute shame.

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Watch This Artist Age, Die, And Be Reborn Through The Power Of Makeup

London-based artist Emma Allen painted her face over 750 times to make this video project. It is truly impressive.

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A $45.2 billion cable bill

Comcast, the largest US cable company, wants to be even bigger, and it has agreed to buy Time Warner Cable for $45.2 billion in stock. Together, after planned divestitures, the combined company would have 30 million subscribers, or a little less than 30% of the US cable market.

Zach Seward summarizes the rationale for the acquisition in six charts and this sentence: “The pay TV industry is in flux as Americans drop their cable TV subscriptions but pay the same companies for internet service, and since Comcast and TWC control different regions, why not add to the industry’s history of consolidation?”

It wouldn’t be M&A without real or imagined synergies. Breakingviews’ Jeffrey Goldfarb says the deal will save the combined company $1.5 billion in costs. “Taxed and capitalized, those would be worth about $10 billion. That more than covers the 18% premium to Time Warner Cable’s most recent closing price”.

The conventional wisdom is that the deal won’t be stopped on antitrust grounds. But Kevin Roose runs the acquisition through the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, which measures industry concentration, and concludes that the deal should be stopped. Roose calculates that the acquisition moves the cable industry from “moderately concentrated” to close to “highly concentrated”. The precise amount of the increase, Roose says, raises concerns under the Justice Department’s guidelines. The deal is also subject to Federal Communications Commission approval, which has different standards than the DOJ.

Jordan Weissmann points out that the deal may be a fit simply because Comcast and TIme Warner cable don’t compete in the same markets. Matthew Klein crunches the numbers and believes Comcast-TWC will be able to invest more money in infrastructure and deliver better cable and faster internet, which would be a good, if not ideal, outcome for customers of both companies.

MG Siegler thinks the transaction is just more of the status quo:

The strangest thing is that this deal isn’t actually anti-competitive — because there was never any competition to begin with. Time Warner Cable doesn’t operate in areas where Comcast operates. So, if this acquisition goes through, consumers will continue to have no choice in their cable operator.

Cable TV is still a big, profitable business, but as Daniel Gross writes, it’s losing customers to the internet. Om Malik writes that the deal is “all about broadband”. Not only will Comcast be the largest broadband provider in the US, it will be perhaps the largest outside China, and control “about half of what is called triple-play services — video, voice and internet — in the US”. That, says Andrew Leonard, is “internet disaster waiting to happen”. -- Ben Walsh

On to today’s links:

Billionaire Whimsy
The politics of our pension system -- and a billionaire's crusade against it - Felix Salmon

Charts
America's disappearing middle-skill jobs and wages - Shane Ferro

Bitcoin
Bitcoin mining "is becoming increasingly formalised, structured, and dare we say, corporate" - The Kernel

Distinctions
There is no such thing as the banking profession - John Gapper

Financial Innovations
There's a growing market for catastrophe bonds - Georgia Levenson Keohane

Big Ideas
How a $4 minimum wage (plus a host of other benefits) could get Americans back to work - Michael Strain

Strange Bloomberg Headlines
"Sheep-Shearing Wells Fargo Banker Bridges US Income Gap" - Kasia Klimasinska

Alpha
The puzzling relationship between population growth and stock market returns - The Economist

Robots
"The story of capital only has one ending: everyone eventually goes bankrupt" - Karl Smith

New Normal
Two ideas to replace the outdated notion of the dignity of work - Ryan Avent

Charts
Retail sales were below expectations in January - Bill McBride

Bourbon
Are we in a bourbon bubble? - Fortune

Right On
Why dressing down might get you ahead - Phys.org

Follow Counterparties on Twitter. And, of course, there are many more links at Counterparties.

 

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Daily Investor Briefing: Comcast takeover of Time Warner Cable...

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02/13/2014
Reuters Election 2012 Daily round-up of the day's top news from the campaign trail, the White House and all the politics in between
Comcast takeover of Time Warner Cable to reshape U.S. pay TV
(Reuters) - Comcast Corp's proposed $45.2 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable Inc could face close scrutiny from U.S. antitrust regulators because of the deal's potential to reshape the country's pay TV and broadband markets.
Cold weather chills retail sales, jobless claims up
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. retail sales fell unexpectedly in January and more Americans filed for jobless benefits last week, the latest signs the economy started the year on softer footing as unseasonably cold weather took its toll.
Exclusive: World Bank aims to boost lending by 50 percent over 10 years
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The World Bank hopes to boost its lending by 50 percent over 10 years by cutting costs, loosening a restriction on how much it can lend, and charging richer nations higher fees for some services, several people familiar with the matter said.
BP must face shareholder suit over 2006 Alaska oil spill
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Thursday revived a shareholder lawsuit against BP PLC over statements the company made in the wake of a 2006 oil spill in Alaska.
Analysis - Snow blind: winter's wrath obscures views on U.S. economy
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Interpreting U.S. economic figures in the last couple of months has taken on a familiar pattern: wonder about possible weakness in demand, and then shrug and dismiss it all as a product of bad weather.
Ackman: Air Products shares could double with right CEO
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Billionaire investor William Ackman said there is room for Air Products and Chemicals Inc's stock price to double in the next few years if the industrial gas producer hires the right chief executive.
Wall St. closes higher; Nasdaq up for sixth straight day
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks closed higher on Thursday, with the Nasdaq rising for a sixth straight day, as investors looked past disappointing data on consumer spending, chalking the weakness up to weather instead of weaker fundamentals.
Kraft profit up on retiree benefit gain, cost savings
(Reuters) - Kraft Foods Group Inc on Thursday reported a higher quarterly profit on lower costs and a large accounting gain related to retiree benefits.
American to seek other carriers to fly new jets, regional unit says
(Reuters) - American Airlines Group will start looking for other carriers to operate new regional jets from Embraer after labor leaders at its American Eagle Airlines subsidiary's pilots' union rejected a concessionary labor contract, the unit's president said in a note to staff on Thursday.
AIG raises dividend as it swings to profit, plans job cuts
(Reuters) - Insurer American International Group Inc on Thursday raised its quarterly dividend by 25 percent and reported it swung to a profit in the fourth quarter, compared with a year-earlier loss, sending its shares up in after-market trading.
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