TheChek News Flow

Comcast eyes Time Warner Cable bid

Comcast, the $130bn market leader in the US cable industry, has waded into the battle to consolidate the country’s fragmented pay-television market, after being invited to examine a bid for Time Warner Cable. The group is weighing either making a solo “white knight” bid for Time Warner Cable, which has a market value of $38bn, or joining forces with Charter, its smaller rival that has been circling Time Warner Cable since the summer despite being far smaller, with a $14bn market capitalisation.

Comcast’s role in the process comes after representatives of Time Warner Cable approached the Philadelphia-based group to ask it to make an offer that would rival Charter’s overtures, said a person familiar with the matter. Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, has been closely following the speculation around the sale of Time Warner Cable, but until Friday had not emerged as a potential suitor. Many analysts had assumed that its size could present serious regulatory obstacles to a successful acquisition of another US pay-TV and broadband provider, but a joint bid could allow it to overcome these obstacles by breaking up Time Warner Cable’s assets. People familiar with the situation cautioned that Comcast was not in active dialogue with either Time Warner Cable or Charter. Comcast and Time Warner Cable declined to comment. Charter, whose ambitions are supported by John Malone’s Liberty Media group, its largest shareholder, was not immediately available for comment. Craig Moffett, an analyst with MoffettNathanson, told clients that Tom Rutledge, Charter’s chief executive, had said last week that he saw consolidation as being about “running the companies better” rather than primarily about synergies. “There simply aren’t enough synergies [between Charter and Time Warner Cable] to support a reasonable valuation without ‘running it better’,” he added, “and even then, the resulting entity would be frightfully levered” (hence the appeal of a Comcast white knight scenario).

Speculation lifted share prices across the sector. Time Warner Cable shares, which started the year below $100, jumped 10 per cent to $132.92 on Friday, reaching their highest level since the company’s 2009 spin-off from Time Warner, owner of CNN, HBO and Warner Bros. Charter shares rose 6 per cent to $134.66 and Comcast rose 4.4 per cent to $49.52. Glenn Britt, who is due to hand over as Time Warner Cable’s chief executive to Rob Marcus at the end of the year, said in October it was “obviously absurd” to portray him as being opposed to consolidation. “Any decision on consolidation hinges on just one question, does it maximise value for our shareholders?” he said.

Microsoft to win EU okay for $7.3 billion Nokia deal: sources

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Microsoft is set to secure unconditional EU regulatory approval for its proposed 5.4-billion-euro ($7.30 billion) takeover of Nokia's mobile phone business, two people familiar with the matter said on Friday.

The deal, announced in September and which includes a 10-year licensing agreement of Nokia's patent portfolio, underscores Microsoft's push into the competitive consumer devices market.

It faces fierce competition from market leader Samsung Electronics and Apple.

"The (European) Commission is expected to clear the deal without conditions," one of the people said.

The EU competition watchdog has set a December 4 deadline for its decision. Commission spokesman for competition policy, Antoine Colombani, declined to comment. Microsoft also declined to comment. Nokia did not immediately reply to an email for comments.

Regulators in Russia, India, Turkey and Israel have already given the green light to the deal. Nokia shareholders earlier this week also gave a thumbs-up to the sale of what was once Finland's biggest brand and worth 4 percent of the national GDP.

European Banks Are Getting a Negative Vibe

Would you pay someone for the privilege of lending them money?

Euro-zone banks might soon face that conundrum. European Central Bank officials, grappling with low inflation and weak growth, are publicly considering taking the bank's deposit rate, now at 0%, negative. That means effectively charging banks to hold their money.

ECB President Mario Draghi this week faced questions about the possibility of negative rates, a move the central bank discussed at its latest policy meeting. But, even if the ECB takes such a radical step, it may find the euro-zone economic engine doesn't respond.

Central banks rarely set negative interest rates. Denmark's central bank adopted the tactic last year, mainly to support the krone's peg to the euro. The ECB's hope partly would be that charging banks for deposits would spur lending. European financial institutions have about €170 billion ($229 billion) at the central bank in excess of reserve requirements.

In theory, flush banks in Northern Europe would lend more to their southern European peers. That would stoke the interbank market and ease the flow of credit to businesses and households.

Negative rates might also prove an easier option for the ECB than enacting its own Federal Reserve-style bond-buying program. A policy of buying government bonds faces practical and political difficulties given the euro zone comprises 17 different countries. Negative rates, by contrast, could be seen as an extension of conventional policy, consistent with the ECB's role as the euro zone's lender of last resort.

The problem is how banks respond. Bankers themselves are skeptical about the likely effectiveness of such a move.

Regulatory issues could still prevent them lending more. Banks must now hold enough liquid assets like cash to cover their needs for at least 30 days. Cash they lend to other banks doesn't count toward that requirement, though, meaning negative deposit rates may not be able to stoke the interbank lending market.

Negative rates would also reduce banks' profitability, particularly in Germany, France and the Netherlands, whose banks collectively account for the bulk of ECB deposits. Banks would be reluctant to pass on the rate cut to their own customers; the first to do so might face the risk of customers withdrawing deposits.

To maintain margins, banks might have to raise lending rates, the opposite of the ECB's desired effect. Yet absent higher loan rates, negative deposit rates might serve only to weaken robust banks, with scant offsetting benefit.

Moreover, strong banks might still not be willing to lend to weaker ones given the lingering uncertainties over balance-sheet strength at many European firms. Banks with high deposits at the ECB might prefer the predictable hit from negative interest rates to the uncertainty associated with increased lending.

With memories of the euro-zone crisis so fresh, the ECB can't assume financial firms will quickly emerge from their bunkers.

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BN 11/22 16:24 *SOROS BOOSTS STAKE IN TEVA PHARMACEUTICAL TO MOST SINCE 2010

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*SOROS BOOSTS STAKE IN TEVA PHARMACEUTICAL TO MOST SINCE 2010 2013-11-22 16:24:24.219 GMT

--PATRICK MCHALE

-0- Nov/22/2013 16:24 GMT

{http://nyti.ms/I4uvjm}

What’s He Really Like? Check the Lulu App

Not long ago, after Alexandra Amin, an assistant at Warner Brothers, broke up with an agent she had been dating for a year, her friend told her about a new, free, female-friendly social networking app that lets women anonymously review men who are their Facebook friends. . “She was like, ‘He’s so crazy, you should rate him on Lulu,’ ” said Ms. Amin, 29, who lives in Los Angeles. Ms. Amin gave the ex hashtags including #NeverSleepsOver and #FriendZone. He scored a 6.9 out of 10, which, she admitted, was “lower than he actually deserves.”

On Lulu, women can rate men in categories — ex-boyfriend, crush, together, hooked-up, friend or relative — with a multiple-choice quiz. Women, their gender verified by their Facebook logins, add pink hashtags to a man’s profile ranging from the good (#KinkyInTheRightWays) to the bad (#NeverSleepsOver) to the ugly (#PornEducated). The hashtags are used to calculate a score generated by Lulu, ranging from 1 to 10, that appears under the man’s profile picture. (The company’s spokeswoman declined to explain the ratings algorithm.) Men can add hashtags, which appear in blue, but these are not factored into their overall score.

Since it was started last year by Alexandra Chong, who has a law degree from the London School of Economics, the service has provided a sort of “Take Back the Internet” moment for young women who have come of age in an era of revenge porn and anonymous, possibly ominous suitors. “The thing that drew me to Lulu was that dating without a reference is the scariest thing you can do,” said Erin Foster, 31, an actress and writer. “Meeting someone out in the world when you’re not in school or don’t work with each other or have mutual friends — you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.”

Ms. Chong, 32, a former member of the Jamaica Fed Cup tennis team, is now relocating Lulu from London to New York, where she said the audience for her app had grown 600 percent in the last six months, according to the analytics provider Mixpanel. “The trendsetting capital for women is New York and that’s where we need to be,” she said recently.

Sewell Robinson, 24, who lives in the East Village and works for an advertising agency, estimated that 70 percent of her female friends use Lulu; she has reviewed 10 men on the app, some generously. “I have written a few reviews to promote guy friends,” Ms. Robinson said. “If a random girl meets them in a bar and is somewhat interested, I want them to have a good rep on Lulu.”

But she has also panned men, in a sisterly spirit. “I think sometimes girls feel like they don’t have that much power in the hookup world,” Ms. Robinson said, “but this gives them something to bond over, and you can give advice to a girl you’ve never met before.” Appropriately enough, the app was introduced in sororities, which representatives of the company continue to visit. “Sororities are an established network of girls who are talking about relationships, and word spreads very quickly,” Ms. Chong said. “We changed the product a lot with their help.” (She said that a quarter of all college women now use Lulu, according to Mixpanel.)

Ms. Chong herself never belonged to a sorority; she attended Florida International University on a tennis scholarship and after law school worked for Upstream, a large mobile marketing firm. She credited her entrepreneurialism in part to her Canadian mother, whose family helped start the Calgary Stampede, the summer rodeo, and her Chinese-Jamaican father, who she said was born poor but won a lottery and used the windfall to start a tourism company.

She got the idea for Lulu during a boozy brunch with female friends the day after an awkward Valentine’s Day setup. “We were all sharing stories about guys, relationships and sex,” Ms. Chong said. “There were tears and laughter.” She concluded that women needed a focused search engine for dating — a “Guygle.”

“When you Google a guy, you don’t want to know if he voted Republican or what he wrote a paper about in college,” Ms. Chong said. “You want to know if mothers like him. Does he have good manners? Is he sweet?”

Ms. Chong founded Lulu with a friend, Alison Schwartz, a former assistant to the literary agent Amanda Urban, known as Binky. Last February, they secured $2.5 million in financing from people including Yuri Milner, an early investor in Facebook, and Hosain Rahman, a founder of Jawbone.

Ms. Schwartz, 35, is Lulu’s editorial director. She said she drew from Cosmopolitan and Glamour magazines to come up with the app’s supportive voice. “Our goal was always to sound like how young women talk to their own friends,” she said. They currently employ about 30 people and have signed an eight-year lease for a 5,500-square-foot raw space in Chelsea, where they plan to move the company early next year. Ms. Chong no longer has need to be an active Lulu user; she is shopping for apartments downtown with her boyfriend, Jack Brockway, 33, a photographer who is the nephew of Sir Richard Branson, the Virgin Group founder, and the brother of Ned Rocknroll, Kate Winslet’s new husband. Ms. Chong and Mr. Brockway met last spring on Maui at a kite-surfing and networking event where she was giving a lecture and he was shooting a promotional video. They had a brief make-out session and went their separate ways. A week later, they met again, this time at Mr. Branson’s Necker Island in the Caribbean, and had another night of passion. The next day, Mr. Brockway sat in on another of Ms. Chong’s Lulu lectures, unaware of her plan to demonstrate her app by reviewing him in front of his friends and family members. “People thought she was teasing,” Mr. Brockway said, flashing his #EpicSmile and rubbing his #ThreeDayStubble during a recent dinner party in SoHo attended by friends including Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, a founder of Gilt Groupe, and Princess Eugenie of York. Mr. Brockway has since gotten several more reviews (#DudeCanCook), none quite as glowing as the one written by his girlfriend, but he nonetheless has an exceptionally high 9.8 ranking. “There’s nothing I can do about it except be the best person I can be,” he said, adding: “It inspires guys to be good and treat girls the way they should be treated. Like angels.” Not all men are so magnanimous about their presence on Lulu, of course. Last summer, Neel Shah, a comedy writer, was at a bar in Los Angeles on a date with a woman who pulled up his profile. “She started reading me these negative hashtags and I was like, ‘Uh, this is awkward,’ ” said Mr. Shah, 30, whose profile has been viewed 448 times and “favorite” eight times for an average score of 6.7. His hashtags include #TallDarkAndHandsome and #CleansUpGood, along with the less flattering #TemperTantrums and #WanderingEye. “One of the comments was, ‘laughing at his jokes may take some effort,’ which I certainly thought was subjective,” Mr. Shah said. “I feel like if you’re using an app like Lulu, you’re probably not interested in nuanced analysis.” Still, Lulu has received over 500,000 requests from men to be put up for feedback. Apparently many believe it’s better to have been badly reviewed than never to have been reviewed. Some guys have even taken to Twitter to brag about their score or campaign for better reviews. Receiving a score of 6.5, one Mike Isaac tweeted gamely: “I can only assume this is on a scale of 1 to 5.” Eric Morgan, a real estate broker who lives in Brooklyn, was relieved to find out from a female friend that he has a 7.6 score with three reviews and hashtags referring to his one-track mind and “amazing” smell. “I would say that at a particular time I may have had a one-track mind and at a particular moment I may have smelled really good, but they just caught me in that moment,” said Mr. Morgan, 36. “Someone else could say the exact opposite, but I’m not complaining.” Men who do find reason for complaint can pile on the blue hashtags, or have their profile removed by request to the company. But Ms. Chong has the grand hope that Lulu will accomplish what generations of women have not been able to do: change the opposite sex. “There’s an element of behavior modification that we’re hearing and seeing,” she said. “When we do sessions at colleges, we ask guys, ‘Have any of you changed since Lulu launched?’ Hands go up.” For Ms. Amin of Los Angeles, though, the satisfaction is more immediate. Since her initial experience with Lulu she has rated three other guys on Lulu, including one who proposed to her on their first date. (#WantsBebes, #ObsessedWithHisMom). “It’s just this gratifying thing that you know you can do,” she said. “You have no control of whether a guy is great or a jerk and at the end of the experience, even if no one reads it, you feel like you have gotten back at the guy. You have taken a bit of control.”

Time Warner Cable CNBC's Faber citing sources: Comcast shareholders supportive of a possible bid for the company, no active discussions are ongoing - Time Warner made it clear Comcast is the preferred bidder - Companies seeking guidance on possible anti trust concerns

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BN 11/22 14:25 *ITALIAN EXCHANGE TO SET MONCLER DEBUT DATE AT LATER STAGE BN 11/22 14:23 *BORSA ITALIANA COMMENTS ON MONCLER LISTING ON WEBSITE BN 11/22 14:22 *MONCLER SHARES ADMITTED TO TRADING ON MILAN EXCHANGE: BORSA

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Moncler Shares Admitted to Trading on Milan Exchange, Borsa Says 2013-11-22 14:30:43.600 GMT

By Marco Bertacche and Francesca Cinelli Nov. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Borsa Italiana comments on Moncler listing on website. * Italian Exchange to set Moncler debut date at later stage * NOTE from Nov. 7: Moncler Said to Start Presentations Next Week for Italy IPO {NSN MVWM4E1A1I4H <go>}

Link to Company News:{2942075Z IM <Equity> CN <GO>} Link to Company News:{MB IM <Equity> CN <GO>}

For Related News and Information: First Word scrolling panel: {FIRST<GO>} First Word newswire: {NH BFW<GO>}

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Marco Bertacche at +39-02-8064-4233 or mbertacche@bloomberg.net

Intel down 3% in premarket after guiding FY14 rev below expectations, gross margin ~in-line at Investor Day

INTC is down 3% in the premarket following it Investor Meeting where co guided for FY14 revenue flat YoY (consensus calls for FY14 rev +1.7% to $53.5 bln from $52.6 bln in FY13); with gross margin at midpoint of long term range of 55-65% (consensus ~60%); operating income flat YoY with spending as a % of rev flat. Co said the PC market is stabilizing. See 6:20 and &:42 comments for FBR Captial and Mizuho's takeways.

Gapping down

In reaction to disappointing earnings/guidance: VMEM -46%, DLIA -22%, TFM -14.3%, LNDC -11.3%, ROST -7.5%, TXTR -3.4%, MENT -2.3%, ANN -2.1%, GPS -0.9%.

Select names showing weakness following offerings: RITT -15.4% ( prices public offerring of ordinary shares and warrants), NAT -11% (announced public offering of ~$65 mln of common shares; CEO expected to purchase ~$2 mln worth of common shares), NTLS -2.9% (announced secondary offering of 1.5 mln shares of common stock by investment funds affiliated with Quadrangle Capital Partners), NLSN -1.7% (announced 30 mln share secondary common stock offering), NHI -0.9% (prices 4.5 mln shares of common stock at $57.00 per share).

Other news: AMRN -15.6% (Co disclosed that it received notification from FDA that it has not accepted for review, on procedural grounds Amarin's appeal for Vascepa review), INTC -2.6% (still checking, could be related to comments from analyst meeting), CLF -1.8% (attributed to peer X dg), TJX -1.5% (in sympathy with peer ROST earnings), .

Analyst comments: MU -0.7% (downgraded to Neutral from Buy at BofA/Merrill), TGT -0.8% (downgraded to Underperform from Neutral at BofA/Merrill), ANF -0.9% (downgraded to Market Perform from Outperform at Wells Fargo), X -1.3% (downgraded to Underperform from Market Perform at Wells Fargo), TTWO -1.7% (downgraded to Market Perform from Outperform at Cowen).

Gapping up

In reaction to strong earnings/guidance: LRAD +15.2%, ARUN +12.2%, SPLK +11.4%, MRVL +4%, FL +3.9%, ADSK +3.3%, TNP +3.1%, BERY +2.6%, P +2.1%, SIRO +1.9%.

M&A news: TWC +4.7% (Charter Communications (CHTR) is nearing funding deal for TWC bid, according to reports).

Select 3D Pritnter names showing strength: VJET +8.3%, ONVO +5%, XONE +3.9%, DDD +2.3%, SSYS +2.1%.

Other news: PVG +24.6% (reports Bulk Sample surpasses target of 4,000 ounces of gold; processing continues), USU +21.5% (higher by ~10% in after hours trading; co earlier disclosed it received additional government obligated funds of $15.7 mln), POZN +16.2% (announced special cash distribution of $1.75 per share), BIIB +9.5% (attributed to European CHMP updating its opinion on tecfidera as a qualified as a new active substance), LDK +5% (announced onshore financing arrangement for RMB 1.56 bln), HSOL +2% (supplies 12.9 MW of modules to Portugal), NVS +1.9% (announces $5 bln share buyback), NKE +0.8% (increased quarterly dividend 14% to $0.24 from $0.21 per share).

Analyst comments: PAY +3.3% (upgraded to Buy from Hold at Jefferies), SIMO +2.5% (initiated with a Buy at BofA/Merrill), UAL +2.4% (upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Goldman), ZLTQ +2.4% (initiated with a Buy at Cantor Fitzgerald), GME +1.7% (upgraded to Buy at Needham), YUM +1.2% (upgraded to Buy from Hold at Deutsche Bank).