00:00I thought we were done talking about this deal at one point. It keeps coming back. So what's the
00:03latest now? Has the lawyer set a date for this trial? Or judge? Yes, that's who sets a date for
00:08trials. The judge has set a date for the trial. It's going to be in early March of next year.
00:13It's not great for Paramount. They had been pushing for a much earlier trial date. They
00:17were hoping to get something by November. The states had pushed for April. So this is, you know,
00:23a little earlier than what the states pushed for, but the judge was definitely sympathetic
00:26to the state's case. And what this essentially means is, you know, Paramount and Warner Brothers
00:30are going to be in limbo now until this gets litigated, unless they can come to some sort
00:36of settlement out of court. We understand that Paramount CEO Ellison is open to some sort of
00:43settlement, but it's unclear whether the states are open to that. So worst case, Paramount is going
00:48to have to pay billions of dollars in ticking fees while this drags out. So Michelle, along with you
00:54covering media deals, you're also our specialist in pharma deals. And what a week this is with this
00:58deal floated between AstraZeneca and Bristol-Myers, some conflicting reports. What are you hearing from
01:04your sources about how serious these conversations might have been and what it would actually mean
01:08to have the two of them merge? So it is a tricky one because there have been some conflicting reports,
01:13including this morning Reuters reporting that there are no current active talks between Bristol-Myers
01:18and AstraZeneca. We reported Sunday that there had been some talks, however preliminary. Both
01:24companies are, of course, refusing to comment on the status of anything. But what's interesting about
01:29all of this is, you know, after the news leaked Sunday, the investor reaction Monday wasn't great.
01:35Investors from both sides kind of threw up all over the deal. I mean, AZ shares were down 9%.
01:40BMS shares were basically flat. And normally when you see a company subject to, you know,
01:45potential takeover, their shares will move a lot more. And analysts really question the logic of
01:50something like this because AZ, its stock has a lot of promise. You know, they have a lot of growth
01:55ahead of them. While BMS has been kind of thought of as like the sick man of the industry, their
01:59EPS
02:00is supposed to shrink over the coming years. And so there's just a lot of question about the logic
02:04here. That said, we do know that AZ has wanted to do something really big. And the fact that these
02:09talks were even happening suggests or speaks to kind of the mood in the market right now where like
02:14anything feels possible. We haven't seen a mega pharma deal like this for like a decade. So
02:20there could be more to more to come similar to this.
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