This week we look at Elon Musk's Twitter gambit with Matt Levine - will Musk follow through? Now that there's a more committed path to financing, what are the capital markets telling us via those commitments, and what are the next steps for Musk, Twitter's board, and shareholders? We also revisit China's 2022 growth target with Shuli Ren, who called it 'fantasy' on the show two weeks ago before this week's downgrades by the IMF and various institutions. Finally, we examine a new, ever more fractured French electorate with Lionel Laurent as France votes in the presidential runoffs. Hosted by Vonnie Quinn.
Welcome to Bloomberg Opinion listeners. I'm Vonnie Quinn this week. You know, I think he envisions in some ways of philanthropy. He's very rich and he gets to contribute his money to the charities of his tree, and this might be one of them. Sent now Matt Levin on Elon Mosque's Twitter play. Also, people are speaking up actually needs to be very very careful. Julie Ran on the social and economic challenges facing President Chi Jin Ping as China's growth and COVID targets look increasingly unattainable. And later where one candidate to represent right wing social issues and left wing economic issues is actually very close to the mindset of the French. This is really the new French political fault line Leonel Lauren on the ballot that has the potential to change Europe at its core. First, though, to Matt Levine of the Money Staff newsletter and of Force Boomberg Opinion and Elon Mosqus, somewhat unlikely transformation into nineteen eighties style corporate radar. So this week Matt moscatispas X launch a Tesla earnings call, and he just managed to secure forty six and a half billion dollars in financing or at least financing commitments for a Twitter takeover proposal. Bring us up to speed on where Elon Musk is on financing his Twitter bid. Well, he has so. He has twenty five billion dollars in change of commitment letters from banks, which I think are pretty real, although he hasn't signed them yet, so when he signs them, the banks have to give him the money. That seems like a pretty real commitment from banks to actually finance much of his offer if he actually wants to go through with it. He's not committed to going through with it. He hasn't signed anything, he hasn't paid any fees, he hasn't launched the tender offer, he hasn't signed a merger agreement. But he has money lined up if he wants to go through with it. That's billion of the forty six billion that he's raised. The other twenty one billion is uh. He wrote himself a letter saying that he was good for the money. Bloomberg and others seem to think that he doesn't actually have twenty one billion dollars lying around in cash, but he certainly owns enough Tesla shares and Tesla stock options that if he wants to, it would take him a matter of you know, let's say a few days to raise that kind of money, and he could bring in someoneren wealth funds, individuals, hedge funds and so on. The question is who exactly would want to get involved with him. He hasn't exactly endeared himself to some sovereign wealth funds out there. That's right now. He you know, the twenty one billion dollars of equity commitment comes from him. He's signed it, he's on the on the hook for it to the extent he actually does anything. But most people seem to think that he wouldn't actually put up all that money, and that he'd syndicate that apt to someone else. I agree, it's very unclear who that someone else would be. There are a lot of investors who like Elon Musk, there are a lot of investors who don't. And I think that he is talking to a lot of the ones who do about possibly putting some money into this latest lark. They haven't all said no, or they haven't all clearly said no. It's a little unclear to me at this point. So that's the thing about Elon Musk, whatever he says and does is usually surprising. But because he's potentially infinitely wealthy, and he potentially will win every battle with the SEC, and he potentially will create a future that we can't even dream of, now, people have to take him seriously. Right, So we got so much social commentary on Twitter on free speech, on democracy, We've got an LBO model from writers at the f T. You charted out all of the various different paths that he could go, because he may end up doing this now if he does, is the valuation correct excluding transaction costs, forty six and a half billion is about sixty four dollars a share, or eighteen percent higher than Mosque's last offer apparently, which I don't think that that's I don't think that means that I think he is. He has commitments for an amount of money, including stock options and transaction costs and fees and like buying out the dat and other things. I think he's he's raised enough money to do is deal. I think if he decided to go higher, he could probably judge up some of those commitments so that he could he could fund a slightly higher deal. But I don't think there's any indication from what he's done so far that he's planning to go higher. I think he is still stuck at the price. And you know, he said in his first offer to the board that that was his best and final offer, and he's cut off negotiations and gone straight to the end. That's an annoying thing to say. But on the other hand, if your Twitter's board, the best way to counter that would be to have another bidder, so you could play them off against each other. And there's not really any sign of that. So you know, Twitter's board can say this is an inadequate offer and we need higher or we're not selling you the company. And I think they have like a legal basis for doing that, and they have some defenses that will allow them to do that, But it is not ideal for them to say that. I think they'd rather get a higher number, and to do that they need a little more leverage than they seem to have. So let's talk a little bit more about their options, because they have to take him very seriously now. I mean they were probably taking him a little seriously to begin with. They gave him a board seat over a weekend before he declined the board seat. Apparently he was on the actual website. But in hindsight, I mean, giving him a board seat seems like a really good idea. Like I think that the idea of bringing him into the tent, having him sign a standstill agreement, which he he almost it kind of did sign but didn't count where he would agree not to take over the company. I think that they very sensibly thought that was the number one thing to do to react to Elon Musk having nine of their stock, and it almost worked. Yeah, exactly. Now there is pressure on the board to come up with an alternative. Few companies are going to be able to buy this outright, or maybe even going to want to buy Twitter outright. Is there a wide night out there that would get past all the antitrust. I don't know. I mean, you have two problems. One of the economic problem of Twitter's financials don't obviously justify its stock price, or particularly the price that Musk is willing to pay for it. Musk has said explicitly, and it's probably true that he is not offering this price is a way to make money, Like he's not sort of looking to get rich rich are off buying Twitter. He's viewing it as you know, free speech play or like you know, I've I've said, and I think it's true that he really likes tweeting, and so he is making the game that he likes to play a little bit better for himself. But all those considerations like just don't work for a private equity firm, you know, or for even for a strategic buyer um, And I think the strategic names that people toss around, like I think a very large tech company buying a very high profile tech company like Twitter is going to get a lot of scrutiny. So I don't know. I mean, I'm sure that some tech companies are considering it, and and I'm sure that Twitter is calling everyone. But you've not heard a lot about like strategics or even private equity buyers being really interested in this. And you know the time to act as now you haven't eard much. So let's continue to talk about the financing. Why would these banks and we're talking Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Bartley Is and on and on. Why would they give Mosque commitment letters if they didn't think this would be a profitable move. Well, it's interesting, right, So he doesn't have a commitment letter, is from any equity partners, and he might still you know, he might be. He's apparently a negotiationaltequity partners. I don't understand and personally why you would want to be an equity partner in this till he said he doesn't want to make money. He's going to be very controlling. He has said already that he wants to make decisions that seem like possibly bad business decisions, like cutting back on advertising, which he thinks is bad for free speech but is like how Twitter makes its money. So if I were an equity partner, I would I would be very nervous about going in on this deal that he controls and that he doesn't want to make money on. But on the debt side, which is where he's lined up billion dollars of financing from big banks, I think it's a lot easier to justify that about half of that debt financing is a margin loan against his TESLA shares at a very low loaned to value ratio, Like he's putting up five times as many shares as he's getting back in money. So I think if you're one of those lenders, you feel very good that you have really good collateral against your loan and you're gonna get paid back. So the other half of the of the package is sort of traditional leverage of buyout financing to Twitter. So if he buys Twitter, Twitter will take out bank loans and bonds to finance the deal. That looks risky from just the sort of you know, traditional financial metrics where it's just the debt is like through nine times even died and EBA dies like an estimate and doesn't reflect the possibility that Elon Musk will sort of do things advertising actually destroy all of their their revenue. Um. But that said, like, you're not really thinking about this, I think like an LBO loan to a company with inconsistent cash. You're thinking of it as another loan, more senior loan to the richest person in the world, and he likes Twitter. And if Twitter doesn't make enough money one year to service this debt, what are the odds that Elon Musk will like put some money into service the debt instead of losing Twitter to Morgan Stanley. I don't know, they're probably pretty good they could conceive Morgan Stanley saying, you know, we'll take that risk because the richest person in the world is not going to give up this toilet he just bought. Speaking of toilet, you're reminding me of one of the headlines that this produced, which was it was Jonathan the last Mosk Twitter, same toilet, different plunger, which brings me a little bit to the social aspect of all this. Obviously, you know it's a free speech play, it's a democracy play. But we have to ask ourselves. Would Elon Musk re platform Donald Trump? For example? How would he not have this whole platform turn into four ton? Is he going to hire content moderators? He's anti union, so will people go work for him? There are so many operational questions to wonder about. You have to wonder if it wouldn't irreparably fundamentally changed Twitter in some ways. If he if he was the CEO or the owner. Well, one interesting thing there is you said CEO or the owner. The thing that I am perhaps most curious about in this bit is who would be the CEO of a Twitter on Elon Musk he at some point made some noises about liking Para or all the current CEO, but he has now sort of turned against that and said that he cannot invest in Twitter with current management, so the current CEO is out. He seems to have some sort of weird dynamic with Jack Dorsey, the founder and former CEO. I don't know why Jack would come back, but outside of possibility, it seems very unlikely that Elon Musk would be the CEO of Twitter, though you never know because he's list the CEO of like three other company so it's not impossible, but someone I think would have to sort of run the company day to day. And I think that being the number two to Elon Musk at Twitter when he has these like very strongly expressed but someone on clear opinions about how to run Twitter would be a very difficult job, right, Like you would be very much second guest and undermined as the sort of strategic leader of the company. So I don't know, I mean, I don't I don't think anyone knows the answers to a lot of these questions. I think he would re platform Donald Trump. I think he would err in the direction of banning less abusive speech. But I think he's he has said he wouldn't be anti all moderation, right. I think he you know, he would ban illegal things, of which there are a lot on the Internet and it's a real challenge for platforms like this to moderate. But I think he's also interested in cracking down on spam and like scammy crypto schemes, which are often done using his name, right, I mean, pretending to be Elon Musk to get people to send your bitcoins as as a longstanding thing that I think annoys him rightly. So I don't think he's opposed to all moderation of Twitter. He would just sort of shift the dials to make it a little bit more right wing, and at a high level, I think that's what he wants. At a practical level, I don't know how he operationalizes that. You know, Like, if you work at Tesla, you wanted to go work for Elon Musk. If you work at Twitter, that's not the case, right, So, Like it's possible that like the top one thousand people at Twitter will quit and be replaced by a thousand people who want to work for Elon Musk. But I don't know how that will work, and it will be a tough transition. I mean, in some ways is it a vanity. It's a very expensive vanity project. It's very rich, is very rich. I do think it is to some extent of vanity project. I mean, right, it is a Peter Teal type move, you know. I think he envisions that in some ways is like as philanthropy as like he sort of and I see you cringing, um, and you know, reasonably so. But like, I think that he thinks that Twitter is important to the world, and he thinks that the way it is being run currently is bad for the world, and he thinks that he would run in a way that is better for the world. And one might disagree with him, but he's very rich and he gets to contribute his money to the charities of his choice, and this might be one of them. So let's take things full circle and get back to the financing and how this might actually work, what would be next. It started off as an LBO type thing. He looked like he was going to be a parliament type corporate raider and so on. It's turning into something a little different now, but there is still a poison pill defense potentially. Oh yeah, I think it is still very much a standard hostile takeover situation at this point. The poison pill is a way for the board to buy time and to stop him from doing shady things, Like shady is an overstatement, but like they don't want him to buy more stock in the open market while he's still sort of trying to buy the whole company. But yeah, they have a poison pill in theory that probably will prevent him from doing a tender offer to buy the whole company. Although at this point, you know, if people are kind of wondering if there are ways for him to just sort of blow everything up and get around the pill. But the most likely outcome here is that he and the board sit down and you know, the board has some tools. They of the poison pelt, he has some tools to write, he has the financing lined up. He's offered them a premium price. I think what will come down to is what Twitter's big shareholders think, and they can talk, you know, they can communicate with the board and with Musk and say what they think. And I think if like a large majority of shareholders are very in favor of this offer, and if Twitter can't find a better offer than I think, ultimately the board will probably cave. And I think if the opposite is true, then the board won't cave and must will go away. Vanguard owns ten so far it's a larger shareholder than Musque. Will Vanguard be okay with this? I really have no idea. I think that in hustle takeover situations, your job as the offerer and your job as the board is to go to Valley Forge and sit down with Vanguard and present a financial case that your offer is better or that declining the offer is better. And I don't know what they're gonna think. It's a strange position for them to be and as a sort of largely index provider to sort of decide what the value of the stock is. But you know, that's that's how hustle takeovers work. And I think you're gonna be pitching other more value driven investors, and you're gonna be pitching I S S the sort of big fox, the advisors who are going to formulate their own view on whether this is a good deal, and whose view is going to have some weight with shareholders. Matt Levin there. Do subscribe to his Money Stuff column. Also, if you have thoughts and opinions, we'd love to hear them at Bonny Quinn on Twitter or email v Quinn at Bloomberg dot net. A couple of weeks ago on the program, Surely Ran in Hong Kong called China's growth target of five and a half percent a fantasy. Well, this week the i m F cut its growth outlook for China to four point four percent. In fact, we've got a string of cuts from banks and economists. Surely Run is back with us now from Hong Kong So Shuly. The b b OC implemented targeted policy tools this week as opposed to rate cuts, twenty three measures with the intention of helping farmers, truck drivers, mortgage holders, all sorts of people. Is Beijing though at risk of losing credibility. I think people say all PBOC needing measures have disappointed, but there's just so much potential bank can do because a big chunk at the real economy is on the lockdown right now. I think at this point China needs to somehow figure out how to relax this whole video policy. Yeah. I mean, in some ways, we're seeing a very interesting experiment right Instead of the typical central bank action or what we might have seen from the VOC after two thousand eight, we're actually seeing something wildly different, and we don't know how it's going to work out yet. Yes, absolutely so, being the reason they start to talk about just trying to help move their logistics. I mean, China is known for its good logistics. Right Changhai has the world's biggest port and it's effectively closed down. And then like all the e commerce companies Ali, Baba, JD, dot com, they can ship produce to you within thirty minutes on the hour, and all of that is being shipped down. So they're trying to, you know, move out the logistics and say, you know, truck drivers, they should be allowed to go from one region to another. And I think that's the most important thing because without that, the whole supply chain is broken. We hear a lot about food shortages, it's the logistics and that's what they need to fix first. The other thing that was really surprising this week was that China inflation hit wait for it, wanted a half percent last month. How has China been avoiding the scourge? I mean I can posite reasons, but what are your thoughts on why China is only experiencing wanted a half percent inflation when the rest of the world is struggling with severe inflation. I think China is very nervous about inflation because over the years, US hasn't had any inflation for a long long time, right, But China actually has quite a bit of inflation through prices vegetables, quark prices China. Those people feel it, and then when they see polk prices going up, they will complain online. Even with all these lockdowns in Shamghai, the government said no price hikes. So whatever you're selling, this manage still cost five dollars apart. They're basically forcing it, where in the US and Europe they go by market forces. You might even say price controls. Yes, there is full rationing China and the price control and just point it's tough. But at the same time, the COVID zero policy which turned into dynamic clearing and so on, at least officially, China has not seen the kind of deaths that we've seen in other countries. I mean, we're approaching a million deaths in the United States alone from COVID, and China is very proud of that. It is true that China has avoided delta, which is a lot more dead laid death on the crowd, So China is proud of that. And then I think there is a case to be made for the Communist Party. They did a really good job at preventing death. But having said that, I mean, you want to be alive, to enjoy life right and right now, like life is not so great. I really think this is the biggest political test for present damping, way more than last year's we'll stay developers bounty for this is affecting everybody's life. We see a lot of people posting saying this COVID zero policy just makes no sense, and all these people that haven't seen them criticizing the government for years. So people are speaking up as it needs to be very very careful. It's interesting that they feel safe in doing so and that, you know, emotion has come to that point that they will post publicly on the equivalent of Twitter or what have you. In China. Yes, absolutely, I mean, after all, we see our parents possibly being dragged into quaranting centers, or we see our neighbors with young babies they don't have diapers or baby foods. We all see there on a daily basis, and the people are just speaking up at this point. Shui did he said this week it was planning to delist. It's a d r S In the US, the stock tanked more than at one point, even though investors knew this was probably coming and coming soon. You have a fantastic column out saying those who say China is uninvestable are in fact wrong. Managers can just be lazy, Yes, absolutely so. In the US, it's pretty simple, right, people watch the Federal Reserve or to some extent, at the White House. But in China, really there are tons of your credit agencies that you never hear about. That sounds very very skill, but they're very very powerful, like for instance, China Security Regulator and the PBOC. They are basically just at the mid level of the bureaucracy. They're not even that important, like the Cybersecurity Commission. That body actually reports to the top level of China's Communist Party, and they don't talk very much, but when they talk it actually matters. So I think what it means for foreign investors is to you know, when you invest in tech or consumer discretionary company, you have to also understand China's bureo credit systems. People invest in companies and they draw their corporate tree structure. Right when you invest in Chinese companies, you should also draw the government tree structure, who reports to who how important is this entity? Right? And I'm actually gonna tweet out this map that you have of China's major policy bodies. You would like to think that the major headphone managers and money managers in the United States do know all of this. But then you have to ask yourself why DD shares tumbled even though we were expecting this at some point, maybe not the day it happened, but at some point. Yes, absolutely, China's bure credit system, it's just so different from the US. If you tweet out that map, you can see PBOC. It's just really mid level. So don't look at PO, look at other ages that they're way more important. Julie Ren in Hong Kong. As always get in touch at Vonnie Quinn on Twitter or email me at v Quinn at Bloomberg dot net. Market participants are bracing themselves as France heads to the polls and the presidential runoff. A Marine Lepine victory, should it happen, would likely cause market ructions. Now, if Emmanuel Macon holds onto his office, it will be important to look at the margin of victory for signs of a fractured electorate. So let's bring in Lionel Laurent, who joins from Paris so Leonel. France keeps flirting with the far right, but so far it has chosen someone from the political mainstream for president. At the same time, if we compare two thousand and two to two thousand and seventeen, there was a massive change in two thousand to Sheer Act one of the vote to thousand seventeen Macon one with just sixty six percent of the vote, and it looks like might be fairly close this time too. What has happened to the map in France, so there have really been too changes. The biggest change has been the normalization of the far right. Now in the pen has done everything she can to differentiate herself from her father. She has essentially become the voice of disaffected blue color rural voters and really focused on economic dissatisfaction and immigration as well. And what has helped her, and this is the second big change, is the collapse of the mainstream parties left and right that have governed France sort of past a couple of decades. Obviously, Emmanuel McCall has come out of this rubble as the centrist candidate to peel off the pro EU white collar workers of France. But I would say that the real change has been the fact that Lapin keeps rising and this populist far right vote isn't going away. It's gradually moving towards the center, taking away some of the most toxic proposals like for exit, and essentially coalescing around a more conservative platform, a bit like the Orban and Hungary authoritarian conservative once less Europe, but not to quit Europe and really relies on those blue collar votes. I have to say the distribution of votes was absolutely eye opening. After the earlier round. You saw support for Lepan all over the country, not just you know, in the suburbs of large cities or in places where you might have anticipated some support. It's really across the country at this point, and I guess that speaks to some kind of dissemination of ideas well. I would agree that the electorate supporting matc Or has changed a bit. His electorate really was the over sixties, so the Leach ii res who are essentially supporting him now, But he's also the candidate of the well off. And I think what is interesting is you point out is that if you are a worker, if you are an employee, then you are more likely to be a supporter of le Pen, say, than Matt Call, and that I think is a reflection as well of inflation and the cost of living. And actually the big surprise in this election was the far left Milan Shaw getting getting a very substantial share of the vote, and that is you hint, that is happening in cities, especially with the high proportion of second generation immigrants, immigrant workers and the young as well. That is a kind of new urban vote may be reflective of things like climate change, green policies that Matt Call hasn't really managed to colatch onto. So politically i'd say Milor Shaw is the big emergence on the French electoral map, and just put some contact in there. He got twenty two percent of the vote, seven point seven million backers, and there are course national Assembly elections coming up. We'll talk about that in a moment. But he asked as the Borders to not vote for Lepin, but didn't endorse Macom either, so there's obviously lots of fractures. I want to ask you a little bit though about the dynamic because Lepine's National Rally Parties says it all in the name. On social issues, it's right wing paranoia regarding immigrants, diluting the national identity and so on. But as you say, in terms of economic policy, she's for things like reducing the retirement age, offering zero interest loans to homebuyers, raising salaries for teachers, other public sector workers, and so on. It's hard to reconcile economic and social policy. Are voters necessarily an agreement with everything that her platform says? Well, the situation did you describe, where one candidate to represent right wing social issues and a left wing economic issues is actually very close to the mindset of the French. According to a lot of polling after COVID nine team, it is not that incongruous in a country where there was a hit from COVID, there was a lot of support from the state. There was a total change in the mindset, even of mac Hall, who was seen as a big liberal reformer and who ended up being a kind of status who would liberate the purse strings of French fiscal spending and even went to Europe to get Angela Merkele to sign up to his vision. So this is really the new French political fault line. There is now a shift to the right on social issues. But I don't see any of the top candidates offering anything less than more spending, and Lapend, as you point out, has a program with budget giveaways. It's very surreal to see her campaign ads essentially Payton mcu as as the right wing, supposedly neoliberal figure who is going to make the French work longer with less reward, whereas she is going to offer them a protective cushion. You know. The other thing is that she wants to take a step back when it comes to NATO and also engage in a so old strategic repress more with Russia. How is the electorate responding to these parts of her so called foreign policy when war is raging in Ukraine. So foreign policy rarely moved the needle for voters. When war first broke out, obviously fear was the number one reaction and there was a rally round the flag effect. Since then, it's been all about the after effects of the war and inflation, inflation, cost of living. Ironically, France has one of the lowest inflation rates in the Eurozone right now because Matt Hall has been so quick to give protective handouts to shield consumers from the cost of living, but it still hasn't worked, because it's still the number one priority. Now. The pen has talked about leaving NATO's Integrated Command, which is associated with France's Cold War policy under the Ghoul, and actually it only rejoined the Integrated Command under Suckers. But even here polls suggest the French do not want to leave NATO, they don't want to leave the EU. But because it's only the Integrated Commander and not the entire alliance. Because Lapin is trying to invoke nostalgia for France's Cold War politics, it really hasn't made waves at all. I think what is more problematic for her are things like her past times with Putin, her desire to really tear up European integration. Those are the more obvious parts of the foreign polity platform. But really when it comes to war in general, the French are laser focused on the economic costs, and even if Poles suggests they do not see Putin as a friend or ally at all and clearly see him as the threat, they haven't rejected Lapin for that reason. I want to just point out that France is a mixed parliamentary and presidential system, so the president appoints, the cabinet chooses the government basically has more power than europe other presidents, but he or she would need substantial support from the National Assembly, that's five seventy seven legislators. Those elections are coming up in June. Let's say Macon wins again. He will obviously have to be president with a huge number of citizens that did vote for Lepen, perhaps more than the last time. How does he go about achieving unity. Well, we need to see how tight the final result is, and we need to see what happens in the legislative elections. We can easily say that there will be no Hogheymoon period. I think he clearly has experience wielding power in France, which was divided before the election and will will be divided afterwards. To be fair, he clearly has turned into a different kind of leader already. Look at the speed at which the inflation busting handouts were arranged and by the way they are due to run outs at the end of this year. And look at the entire management of COVID nineteen, which again was really about putting the state to work and doing as much as possible to boost employment, keep people in work issue, guaranteed loans really just protect the country as much as possible. For precisely of the reason you raise, Jean mel his party could potentially gather a majority in the National Assembly. He did extraordinarily well, as we've been saying, Does he have any chance of the premiership depending on who wins the presidential election. I think it's pretty unlikely. Yes, you're right that there are many potential we call it cohabitations in mind if there is a huge upset, but I think for now it's it's seen as a pretty unlikely situation. There are obviously going to have to be changes at all these parties. Melanchan has been around for for a long time. The pen to the mainstream parties have been decimated. There is going to be a lot of political flux. I really wouldn't bet today on a Melanchan premiership. You see, there's a class erode, right. All of the governments had this problem, you know, with rainbow coalitions and know Italy not being able to put together a government. It just seems to be chronic, that's true, and there is going to have to be a whole discussion about democracy in France. There are proposals about how to get more direct democracy, more proportional representation in parliament. There could potentially be a lot of changes in the French system. I hope though, that there will also be kind of simple analysis of the current system and what we could do better without making these huge radical changes or going for direct democracy, which is just more voting. Even just basic parliamentary elections happened straight after the presidential elections and they that's it, and then you have a five year president plus parliament. I think maybe we could do with having mid term elections or a slightly different setup that that strengthens the parliament a bit. I'm not sure that all of these very radical solutions should be quite so hurriedly rushed. In Leonel laurentder in Paris. We are now choosing to exit all conversations. Not with you, though comments and opinions always welcome at Bonny Quinn on Twitter or email vequin at Bloomberg dot Net. Were produced by Eric Mollowe Till next Time on Bloomberg Opinion.