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Speaker 2: A little m and a trade today here, not so
Speaker 2: little for this seller here, But we're Amazon, Amazon, which
Speaker 2: doesn't do a lot of acquisitions, and you agreed to
Speaker 2: acquire satellite operator Global Start in a roughly eleven point
Speaker 2: six billion dollar deal to boost its satellite operation. Okay,
Speaker 2: Michelle Davis, she's got the detailed senior deals reporter for
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News. Here, Michelle, what's Amazon up to these days?
Speaker 3: You know this deal is all about basically, you know,
Speaker 3: there's a massive rate to race to dominate space based productivity.
Speaker 3: All the tech giants are trying to do it. SpaceX
Speaker 3: is obviously the leader. Amazon also has a big ambitions
Speaker 3: to be a leader in satellites and this steal is
Speaker 3: all about spectrum. Global Star has really valuable spectrum, which
Speaker 3: is think of it as real estate. That's you know,
Speaker 3: a scarce asset. Whoever got it first was able to
Speaker 3: sell it later on, and that's that's how Global Star
Speaker 3: ended up, you know, being able to sell this to Amazon.
Speaker 3: And not only are they getting spectrum with this deal,
Speaker 3: they're also getting infrastructure on the ground and a massive
Speaker 3: customer in Apple, Apples one of global Stars customers. As
Speaker 3: part of the deal, Amazon was able to negotiate basically,
Speaker 3: you know, keeping Apple on board, they'll be using the
Speaker 3: Apple will be using its services to provide you know,
Speaker 3: emergency services. If you're out hiking and there's no no
Speaker 3: cell service, you can use satellites to call nine one one,
Speaker 3: or you know, people can find you and find my friends.
Speaker 4: Basically, is there reason to think that anyone would raise
Speaker 4: their hand object to this deal?
Speaker 5: Would regulators get in the way.
Speaker 3: It's a good question. We've seen regulators be pretty open
Speaker 3: to these spectrum deals. I mean, the regulators themselves are
Speaker 3: the ones who auction off spectrum when it is of
Speaker 3: available in the open market. But in a deal like
Speaker 3: this where you know Global Star was the owner of it,
Speaker 3: of course, you know they get to be the.
Speaker 6: Ultimate decider of who buys it.
Speaker 3: And because Amazon isn't the big leader in this space,
Speaker 3: you know, it doesn't seem like it'd be an issue,
Speaker 3: but you never know, I think what's interesting.
Speaker 6: About but all of this is while this does.
Speaker 3: Kind of help Amazon accelerate its ambitions to be a
Speaker 3: big leader in satellite SpaceX still you know, light years
Speaker 3: ahead of it has way more satellites in orbit. Amazon
Speaker 3: hasn't been able to launch as many as SpaceX, so
Speaker 3: that will be something else that it has to do.
Speaker 4: And PAULA was just noticing that Global Star CEO is
Speaker 4: Paul Jacobs, the former CEO of Qualcom.
Speaker 2: Okay, so I mean Amazon does have this low earth
Speaker 2: orbit satellite network Amazon LEO exactly, but I don't hear
Speaker 2: much about that.
Speaker 6: It's not really in use yet.
Speaker 3: There's still kind of literally getting it off the ground,
Speaker 3: and they're hoping that by twenty twenty eight, especially after
Speaker 3: this deal, they will be able to launch a.
Speaker 6: Direct to device service.
Speaker 3: Which is like having a cell phone tower up in space,
Speaker 3: and it basically means, you know, consumers companies would be
Speaker 3: able to get voice text data without having to use
Speaker 3: a cell tower, but by using their statellites.
Speaker 4: Paul, you had mentioned that Amazon does not make a
Speaker 4: lot of big deals. If you go to the buyp
Speaker 4: function on the Bloomberg terminal, it shows you the buyer profile.
Speaker 4: And the biggest deal is that Amazon has made direct
Speaker 4: M and a Whole Foods was back in twenty seventeen
Speaker 4: for thirteen point six billion dollars Global Star of course
Speaker 4: what we're reporting on today, and MGM holdings the Library
Speaker 4: for ten point two billion, that was back in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty one. Otherwise, Amazon kind of builds it itself and
Speaker 4: we'll see how things shake.
Speaker 5: Out before it decides what the I don't know this one. Yeah,
Speaker 5: you could sort by recent and by largest.
Speaker 2: So what's Amazon saying is their strategy here? I mean,
Speaker 2: are they going to invest in this business?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean what they're really saying is that this, you know,
Speaker 3: is part of their vision to provide connectivity to people
Speaker 3: and be a leader on Earth, connecting people, you know,
Speaker 3: through groceries and deliveries and now you know, voice, text
Speaker 3: and data.
Speaker 2: And this is separate from Jeff Bezos' own little rocket. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well that's why Michelle said on Earth, because at some
Speaker 4: point it's going to expand to in space as well.
Speaker 5: Stay with us more from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
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Speaker 4: Let's talk about another group that obviously is affected directly
Speaker 4: by the surgeon oil prices, and that is the airline sector.
Speaker 4: There's a really interesting story today, Paul, about the United
Speaker 4: CEO pitching President Trump about a possible combination with American
Speaker 4: that kind of just struck me as bananas because it
Speaker 4: would create a behemoth.
Speaker 2: Yep, and they didn't let smaller airlines get together. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure why they let these big ones get together.
Speaker 4: All right, So let's bring in Sid philipp Is, our
Speaker 4: chief correspondent for Global aviation. So, I mean, as Pop
Speaker 4: pointed out, they didn't let Jet Blue and Spirit get together,
Speaker 4: why would someone okay a United American Airlines combination?
Speaker 7: So, Scarlett, this is this is obviously a story that
Speaker 7: we've sort of heard from multiple sources, and I think
Speaker 7: the airlines are looking to test the administration on how
Speaker 7: willing they would be to approve of deals. I mean,
Speaker 7: the last administration was pretty clear that they did not
Speaker 7: see consolidation as sort of beneficial to customers, but they
Speaker 7: sort of Trump administration has been more business friendly, and
Speaker 7: so United Airlines has sort of floated this idea to
Speaker 7: the President. In terms of merging with American Airlines, I mean,
Speaker 7: it would create the largest airline on the planet, and
Speaker 7: it's just still wouldn't be I mean, they still only
Speaker 7: have a third of the US market check combined, so
Speaker 7: it's not quite this would sort of dominate the market.
Speaker 7: I mean it would because I mean they would have
Speaker 7: all the important rules like Dallas and Chicago, where United
Speaker 7: and American control a large junk of the market, but
Speaker 7: in other places like we've seen other airlines as well.
Speaker 7: So it does look like it's unlikely to go through
Speaker 7: because I mean, this would be opposed by all the
Speaker 7: airlines who are not part of it, It would be
Speaker 7: opposed by consumer rights activists, and may also sort of
Speaker 7: not find fail with the legislators, and so we have
Speaker 7: to see how this will go through.
Speaker 2: Do we have any feeling from the regulators in the past,
Speaker 2: because again, as Scarla mentioned, all we kind of know
Speaker 2: is is observers is that they didn't want they didn't
Speaker 2: let too little, anty bitty airlines get together. How would
Speaker 2: this happen?
Speaker 7: So we still we're still looking on We're still waiting
Speaker 7: to see any sort of commentary from it. I mean,
Speaker 7: the sort of the most direct commentary we've heard was
Speaker 7: from Sean Duffy, the trap Transportation Secretary, when he spoke
Speaker 7: last week and told CNN the CNBC that the President
Speaker 7: likes big deals and he would any sort of and
Speaker 7: when asked about a specific large merger, he said that
Speaker 7: they may have to share assets. And so that's the
Speaker 7: only thing we've really heard. But in terms of whether
Speaker 7: or not this administration will be willing to sign off
Speaker 7: on such a big deal, that's still to be seen.
Speaker 4: Okay, So there's a bit of a backstory here in
Speaker 4: that United CEO Scott Kirby was the one who said
Speaker 4: that this is something he kind of floated, and he
Speaker 4: has a history with American Airlines, so it didn't come
Speaker 4: from out of nowhere.
Speaker 7: Absolutely. I mean, this is also personal for Scott Kirby
Speaker 7: because Scott Kirby was previously the president of American Allies
Speaker 7: and he left in twenty sixteen when it became clear
Speaker 7: that he wasn't going to be CEO of American Alliance,
Speaker 7: and then he sort of joined the United airlines and
Speaker 7: he rose to the top job. And that's really his
Speaker 7: sort of backstory. And so American and United have been
Speaker 7: sort of always been one uptering each other. I mean
Speaker 7: at the most recent is that they've been battling in
Speaker 7: Chicago over gates and market share, and then the FA
Speaker 7: had to come in and sort of restrict flights because
Speaker 7: there's too many airlines adding flights in Chicago and the
Speaker 7: airport can't actually handle those coupes.
Speaker 2: So what does it mean for I mean, I'm looking
Speaker 2: at Jet Blue that stocks up eleven percent today? Are
Speaker 2: people in the industry saying whoa whoa whoa?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 2: People would talk about it United in American? How about
Speaker 2: everybody else? Getting together?
Speaker 7: Absolutely? I mean the fact that this deals out there,
Speaker 7: it also sort of opens the doors for other combinations.
Speaker 7: I mean, especially at times of crisis for the airline industry,
Speaker 7: mergers and acquisitions tend to happen. I mean, we saw
Speaker 7: that in the aftermath of the two thousand and eight
Speaker 7: financial crisis, and for the airline industry at the moment,
Speaker 7: this sort of surgeon oil prices is a massive blow
Speaker 7: because there's only a limit as to how much a
Speaker 7: consumer will be willing to pay before they sort of say, okay,
Speaker 7: we'll hold off on travel this summer. And for the airlines,
Speaker 7: fuel is the biggest sort of single biggest cost aside
Speaker 7: from stuff costs, and so they have to sort of
Speaker 7: figure out how they can actually make money on with
Speaker 7: fuel being where it's at, and that sort of time
Speaker 7: when typically consolidation happens where weekup players tend to get
Speaker 7: snapped up by the more sort of robusts financially. Financially
Speaker 7: robust ones.
Speaker 5: Stay with us.
Speaker 2: More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple, Cocklay and Android
Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever
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Speaker 2: I'm not into the EV thing yet. I did get
Speaker 2: one hybrid for the number four Offspring episode.
Speaker 5: Who's in California, So like that's the context here.
Speaker 2: Six dollars guests. So one of the EV companies I
Speaker 2: kind of forget about it. It's just me is a
Speaker 2: lucid group they.
Speaker 5: Make because you're not a Timothy shalomy fan.
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Is that it?
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's the global brand ambassador.
Speaker 2: All right, the stocks you got two point nine billion
Speaker 2: dollar valuation down sixteen percent this year, down sixty five
Speaker 2: percent or the trailing twelve months. But they have some
Speaker 2: news out today. They're going to new CEO and now
Speaker 2: seven hundred and fifty million dollars of fresh investment from
Speaker 2: two big backers here. So let's see what's going on
Speaker 2: with Lucid. Ticker ELCID is the Bloomberg ticker. Craig Trudeall,
Speaker 2: Global Autors, editor for Bloomberg News. He joins from London. Craig,
Speaker 2: what's Lucid doing here to try to turn things around?
Speaker 8: We knew it was going to be a busy morning
Speaker 8: for them. It was an even busier morning than we anticipated.
Speaker 8: We spoke with Sylvio Napoli, the former head of Shindler
Speaker 8: holding of Elevator and you know, moving Walkway fame. He's
Speaker 8: going to take over as CEO, the person who's been
Speaker 8: filling that seat for over a year now on an
Speaker 8: interim basis, Mark winter Off. He will return to the
Speaker 8: role of COO. He took over from the CEO who
Speaker 8: actually kind of took this company public. I think, you know,
Speaker 8: Lucid in addition to you know, you mentioned that the
Speaker 8: you know, commitment as well from the Saudi Public Investment
Speaker 8: Fund and Uber. The other news here was as part
Speaker 8: of this capital raising which they're doing some raising beyond
Speaker 8: just from the PIFF, and Uber is releasing some preliminary
Speaker 8: earnings which did not look great. So this is a
Speaker 8: company that has really been struggling to execute make some
Speaker 8: really appealing and interesting electric vehicles, but has really struggled
Speaker 8: to make them in higher volumes than doing so in
Speaker 8: profitable or remotely profitable way. So, you know, I think
Speaker 8: in short, Napoli has his work cutout for him.
Speaker 4: I mean, is Loocid's goal to be a mass market
Speaker 4: EV company? From what I can find, it doesn't deliver
Speaker 4: a lot of cars. In twenty twenty four, for instance,
Speaker 4: it delivered more than ten thousand vehicles, but I mean
Speaker 4: that's nothing compared to something like Tesla.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's a fraction, you know, And I do think
Speaker 8: it's been a case where the company has been sort
Speaker 8: of feeling around what exactly its play is. I think,
Speaker 8: you know, for a time they were trying to go
Speaker 8: lower volume, higher higher prices, and you know, kind of
Speaker 8: casting themselves as a premium player. But later this year,
Speaker 8: they will start production of a mid sized vehicle where
Speaker 8: they've they've flagged the rough pricing of that being around
Speaker 8: fifty thousand dollars, so that would put them more, you know,
Speaker 8: at least closer to the sort of mass market where
Speaker 8: you see, you know, like a model why you can
Speaker 8: get you know, price in that range. So you know,
Speaker 8: this is a company that has tried to compete with
Speaker 8: like the Mercedes and the Porches of the world, found
Speaker 8: that really difficult, and they are doing a bit of pivoting.
Speaker 8: How much that has been a sort of like change
Speaker 8: in plan versus the plan all along is a little
Speaker 8: bit unclear, and it's kind of depending on who you ask.
Speaker 8: I think the CEO, who is sort of placed about
Speaker 8: a year ago, I would have preferred they stayed premium,
Speaker 8: and I think they've changed attack a little bit under
Speaker 8: the new regime.
Speaker 4: So right now, the Lucid's big thing, of course, this
Speaker 4: is partnership with Uber, and this was first annunced in
Speaker 4: July where Uber said it would buy at least twenty
Speaker 4: thousand Lucid Gravity SUVs.
Speaker 5: That new vehicle you were talking about.
Speaker 4: Has this partnership with Uber amounted to anything just yet,
Speaker 4: I mean, is it getting its name out there.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think it's going to be really interesting to
Speaker 8: see if that you know, is able to get off
Speaker 8: the ground. They have a third party that's involved in
Speaker 8: that partnership, a company called Neuro that itself was working
Speaker 8: on delivery robots and has pivoted to getting into autonomous
Speaker 8: vehicles and trying to compete with the likes of Weimo.
Speaker 8: You know, this is still very much in the sort
Speaker 8: of prototyping and testing phase, and we've not seen them
Speaker 8: actually launched vehicles. But I'm endlessly fascinated by just how
Speaker 8: much money Uber is throwing at trying to kind of
Speaker 8: you know, have its own fleet of self driving vehicles
Speaker 8: and and have you know, some competition for weimo. Even
Speaker 8: as it partners with Weimo, there's a lot of experimenting
Speaker 8: and playing around with business models in the space. And
Speaker 8: we are still so early. For all the headlines we
Speaker 8: read about you know, new cities that Weimo is entering,
Speaker 8: they still have just a few thousand cars out on
Speaker 8: US roads across the various cities where they have deployed,
Speaker 8: and so this is really really early innings. Even if
Speaker 8: people are increasingly having their first experiences with getting into
Speaker 8: a fully driverless car.
Speaker 2: Craig, what's the what's the latest with Tesla and it's
Speaker 2: bringing in a lower price model.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that was There was an interesting report out of
Speaker 8: Reuters about maybe they're dipping their toe back into making
Speaker 8: a vehicle priced below the Model three in the Model y.
Speaker 8: We saw Tesla China representatives deny that that report. But
Speaker 8: what may that's so fascinating is it's it's speaking of
Speaker 8: sort of you know, changes in strategy by companies, you know.
Speaker 8: I think Elon Musk has sort of you know, mince
Speaker 8: no words about, in his words, it being stupid for
Speaker 8: for Tesla to sort of bring cars to market that
Speaker 8: are lower price, you know, because in his mind, you know,
Speaker 8: you know, every day is you know, going to be
Speaker 8: the day that Tesla sort of flips a switch and
Speaker 8: is able to render its cars capable of driving themselves.
Speaker 8: I think regulators are extremely skeptical of that, in part
Speaker 8: because you know, those days keep you know, coming and
Speaker 8: going without that capability really being ready to where you know,
Speaker 8: people behind the wheel can actually tune out and not
Speaker 8: pay attention to the system that that Tesla sells as
Speaker 8: full self driving, which just has not lived up to
Speaker 8: the name yet.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean there's two components to that, right, the
Speaker 4: fact that a switch could be flipped on that and
Speaker 4: whether regulators would allow it to technologically, whether we're there yet,
Speaker 4: and whether the regulators have given that the Okay, do
Speaker 4: consumers want that?
Speaker 8: And that's a great question too. I think you know
Speaker 8: some consumers absolutely and uh, you know you will see
Speaker 8: uh Tesla super fans. Many of them happen to be investors,
Speaker 8: you know, sharing uh, you know, indications of a progress
Speaker 8: where you know they are fond of taping their drives
Speaker 8: where things go well and uh, and yet the questions
Speaker 8: that you sort of naturally, you know, raise our how
Speaker 8: sort of choosy are they being about what clips they
Speaker 8: show and don't show? And you still continue to see
Speaker 8: incidents where you know, teslos that aren't being supervised or
Speaker 8: getting into two really troubling crashes.
Speaker 5: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us Live
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Speaker 5: It is earning season.
Speaker 4: The big banks began reporting yesterday with Goldman Sacks kicking
Speaker 4: things off, which is kind of unusual because.
Speaker 5: It's usually not the first bank to report YEP.
Speaker 4: That would be JP Morgan, JP Morgan City Group and
Speaker 4: Wells Fargo reported today.
Speaker 5: So four out of six big banks have reported.
Speaker 4: Herman Chan, of course, is our senior bank analyst here
Speaker 4: at Bloomberg Intelligence, and of course we needed to bring
Speaker 4: him in. Is it as simple as to say that
Speaker 4: the volatility in the markets is just unit directionally good
Speaker 4: news for these big banks?
Speaker 9: It is, at least for the ones that reported today. So,
Speaker 9: JP Morgan City posted really strong results on trading equities
Speaker 9: and on the fixed income side. I would contrast that
Speaker 9: a bit with what Goldman did yesterday where they disappoint
Speaker 9: a bit on the fixed income side of the trading
Speaker 9: house that was driven by areas like rates and mortgage,
Speaker 9: which seemed like they were not positioned correctly with the
Speaker 9: volatility that happened in March.
Speaker 2: What happened or what's going on with Wells Farg?
Speaker 9: Yeah, Wells Fargo, it's interesting story. They reported really strong
Speaker 9: earnings from a EPs standpoints, but the disappointment came from
Speaker 9: the net interest margin. It was down thirteen basis points
Speaker 9: quarter of a quarter. Management talked about some areas that
Speaker 9: we're driving that growth in some lower yielding markets, businesses
Speaker 9: that they're intentionally growing due to the fact that they
Speaker 9: think that will bring along business and other areas like
Speaker 9: trading in the prime brokerage business. So it's sort of
Speaker 9: like build it and they will come type action going on,
Speaker 9: and they expect some further compression in the second quarter,
Speaker 9: which is driving some of the weaker market sentiment that
Speaker 9: we're seeing today.
Speaker 4: Wells Fargo had its asset cap lifted by the Federal Reserve,
Speaker 4: which means that it can now get bigger. So do
Speaker 4: we expect, you know, some more spending, some you know,
Speaker 4: tighter margins for the foreseeable future as it tries to
Speaker 4: really build.
Speaker 9: On its assets. Yeah, you see the assets growing really quickly.
Speaker 9: They're probably going to be the fastest growing JISA bank
Speaker 9: that we cover, the largest banks that we cover in
Speaker 9: terms of long growth that's about five percent quarter.
Speaker 5: But make up a lot of lost ground it does.
Speaker 9: It has to make up a lot of lost ground,
Speaker 9: and they're sort of growing the balance sheet to hope
Speaker 9: to help offset some of the margin compression that I
Speaker 9: mentioned earlier, but that also portends the higher costs in
Speaker 9: areas like advertising and headcount growth potentially over time, but
Speaker 9: definitely you're seeing it in the advertising spend.
Speaker 2: Are the banks in general are they lending money these days?
Speaker 2: How does loanrigination look?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 9: They are in pockets right. So there's not a lot
Speaker 9: of growth in areas like mortgage because of the rate environments.
Speaker 9: Card is seasonally softer this quarter, but it was strong
Speaker 9: last quarter given the holiday season. A lot of the
Speaker 9: growth is areas like lending to non bank finds ancial institutions.
Speaker 9: That's been the rage in the industry, lending to these
Speaker 9: private credit firms that are in the news, lending to
Speaker 9: areas like a venture capital and mortgage company. So it's
Speaker 9: a bit of a mixed bag in terms of where
Speaker 9: the long growth is coming from.
Speaker 4: We talk a lot about a K shaped economy where
Speaker 4: the upper leg of the K is doing very well.
Speaker 4: The wealthy are getting wealthier, the less wealthy, the ones
Speaker 4: that are really struggling through this are suffering more. Are
Speaker 4: banks actively using that as their strategy as well? I'm
Speaker 4: wondering if the services that they're offering, the areas are
Speaker 4: choosing to grow, is pursuing that higher end of that K.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 9: That's been a trend over time where the largest banks
Speaker 9: are really focusing on that prime customer. So there's not
Speaker 9: a lot of lending activity towards the bottom half of
Speaker 9: the K shape, but there is deposit activity on that front.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 9: So Wells Fargo mentioned that the higher gasoline prices is
Speaker 9: increasing the spend on energy by about one percentage point
Speaker 9: cover a quarter, and that can change every time. They're
Speaker 9: not seeing any changes in the non discretionary spend. That
Speaker 9: happens gradually, and if we do see these persistent higher
Speaker 9: energy costs, that could change as well.
Speaker 2: All Right, my good friends over at City the worst
Speaker 2: elevators on Global Wall Street, my former employer worst elevators. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's there's two stacked on each other. Have you ever
Speaker 2: been one of those things? So you it sometimes it
Speaker 2: stops on your floor, sometimes it doesn't. Oh you're not
Speaker 2: really sure why. And I was there for like three
Speaker 2: or four years. I still didn't figure it out.
Speaker 9: So I have a former City employee as well. I
Speaker 9: remember three eighty eight Greenwich and you just had to
Speaker 9: wait forever for those elevators.
Speaker 5: The several subreddits devoted to this, Oh yeah, there is.
Speaker 5: They've turned the corner.
Speaker 2: It looks like they we can give Jane Frasier you
Speaker 2: know that, I mean.
Speaker 5: A pat on the back, right. Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah. You're seeing that across the board in their first
Speaker 9: quarter reporting, where they're showing really strong revenue growth throughout
Speaker 9: their businesses services which is their primary crown jewel, the
Speaker 9: trading business and markets, banking, US cards. Everything's been going
Speaker 9: really well and you can see that in their return
Speaker 9: on Tangra equity profitability metric, which was thirteen point one percent.
Speaker 9: They're targeting something about ten or eleven percent for the year,
Speaker 9: so already cleared that at least in the first quarter,
Speaker 9: and they alluded to the fact that in their upcoming
Speaker 9: investor day next month that they'll increase their targets for
Speaker 9: profitability as well. So strong momentum there. It's going to
Speaker 9: get better.
Speaker 5: It's going to get better.
Speaker 4: And of course there's a lot of excitement about what
Speaker 4: Jane Fraser has been able to do because she streamlined
Speaker 4: this company down and really deleted all.
Speaker 5: These extra management layers. She made it slimmer.
Speaker 4: Does that and of course this being banking, the next
Speaker 4: question is is she going to make it bigger?
Speaker 5: Is she going to buy something else? Right? That was
Speaker 5: a question on the call today.
Speaker 9: It was one of the first questions from the analysts
Speaker 9: because and the analyst was referring to a Bloomberg News
Speaker 9: article saying that City Group might be interested in buying
Speaker 9: a large regional bank here in the US to improve
Speaker 9: their the past funding base. Jane was unequivalent, saying that
Speaker 9: they're not interested in doing any deals. They're really focused
Speaker 9: on organic growth in order to avoid any sort of
Speaker 9: distractions that come from a merger. So we'll take her
Speaker 9: buyer word and looking forward to seeing more improvement in
Speaker 9: the franchise over the next coming quarters.
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