He's taking stock with Kathleen Hayes and Pim Fox on Bloomberg Radio. Well, it's a deal that could have or still could. I suppose if the people talking about a deal get back together, it could have created the largest candy company in the world. But after her she has rejected an offer from Mandels and Global candy and snack food maker. You kind of wonder what's going to happen. Next. Joining me now is Alex Sherman. He is technology media and telecom m and a reporter. But bottom line, this
is our deals guy. He follows all these deals day in and day out for Bloomberg and he's joining me now in our New York studio. Alex, Welcome, Thanks Kathleen, and we are going to talk about stars and lines. Gape at first, because this is the breaking news. You've been watching deals for a long time. So Mandeleys tells her she we want to We're gonna pay what a dollar seven a share? And her she says, no, thank you.
What do you think's going on? So just saying no thank you doesn't necessarily mean no thank you, because sometimes it gets out of a company's hand. So in other words, you know, a typical deal is done in what's called sort of a friendly manner, which is that the two companies have negotiations, they discuss and then you know, maybe we break a story or maybe not, and a press
releases announced that one company is buying another. If it isn't friendly, then what often happens is a a one company will send another company a so called a bear hug letter. And that's what we saw here, where a company says, look, we would like to buy you for this amount of money. Uh. It then oftentimes turns into a hostile situation, which is what this is more or less, where Hershey is coming out and saying, we rejected the offer and and we have uh, we don't see any
reason to keep negotiations going with the buyer, Mandela. In this case, the question is does Mandelay then up its bid by significantly more money, thus putting pressure on Hershey to negotiate because it has shareholders to answer to. Well, uh, you know, uh mondalai oreos Hershey chocolate seems be a good fit O. People don't eat sugar quite as much. But as you point out, there is a shareholder history. What should be what should we be watching for next?
Is next big headline here. So the next big headline is if Montalais opposites bid. Uh. There's some talk that maybe this is a tactic on Mondalai's part to actually get acquired itself. In other words, threatened to buy another company and therefore put pressure on on a even larger company. You know, they've been talking earlier that Pepsi might want to buy Montalais. Whether it's Pepsi or somebody else, this would force the action on that move. So that's something
else to look out for. Okay, here's a deal that we can talk about, and this is right up your alley, lions Gate Entertainment buying billionaire John Malone's Stars, a cash and stock deal valued at four point four billion dollars. Yeah, we broke this story last night and it was announced this morning. Uh, not really a surprise for those following this industry closely. In fact, I believe I first broke the story that Stars was for sale in ten that's
how long this company has been for sale. Finally breaking a deal today broker in one with lion Skate. The idea here is to put two uh subscale content companies together to give them more leverage Uh, to negotiate with some of the pay TV providers that we've seen come together in recent years. So I'm thinking about a T and T buying Direct TV, or All T spuying Sudden Lincoln Cable Vision, or Charter buying Time Warner Cable. Those deals gave the operators more leverage in the in the
content negotiations between companies. Uh. So it is an after effect that the content companies now would come together. This was a John Malone and Mark Ritchesky deal. John Malone controls Stars and actually got on the board of lion Skate, so he was on both sides of this deal. Mark Rocheski the largest shareholder in lion Skate and will be the largest shareholder of the pro forma company if the deal in fact closes. What are Ana was saying about
this is this, you know, the positive as goodbuy. It depends who you ask. There's definitely a a current and undercurrent of thought that this is sort of a desperate ration deal that both of these companies have struggled. Uh. And surely you can say that just take a look at their stock prices. Lionsgate had a terrible quarter last quarter. Stars has really struggled for a while. They had Disney
Movies and they lost that contract to Netflix. Uh. So I think the idea was that these two companies need to do something. Uh And now the jury is still out if this something is enough. Alright. Alex Sherman, thank you so very much for joining us. He's a technology media and telecom m and a reporter for Bloomberg. Will be seeing how the maybe maybe maybe we'll be back on on the next deal. We'll see out of it. Well, you know, it's always sweet to have you here. Okay,