Paul Taubman, the legendary rainmaker and founder of PJT Partners, talks to Bloomberg's Ed Hammond about the challenges of building an investment bank, what will drive the next wave of M&A, and what it takes to advise companies on their biggest transactions. 

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Guest host Ed Hammond talks to Bloomberg's Scott Deveau and Tara Lachapelle about how Sempra won out in the closely contested battle to acquire $9.45 billion Texas electricity supplier Oncor and what the deal means for Warren Buffett. 

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It's the 25th anniversary of strategic communications firm Sard Verbinnen, a company that specializes in explaining the rationale for large M&A to investors and the media. George Sard and Paul Verbinnen, the firm's co-founders, have spent countless hours in board rooms right next to bankers, lawyers and executives, brainstorming potential messaging strategies for the world. They share advice for CEOs about how to prepare for a Donald Trump tweet and how to plan for the future. 

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As The Bachelorette wraps up another season, a mating dance is developing in the telecommunications world. SoftBank is desperate to find a match for Sprint, the fourth-largest U.S. wireless company, of which it owns 84 percent. It has at least two potential suitors in mind: T-Mobile, the No. 3 U.S. wireless company, or Charter, the second-largest U.S. cable company. With T-Mobile, SoftBank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son would probably have to sell majority control of Sprint. Charter, on the other hand, would be a takeover target -- and would come with an enterprise value price tag of $200 billion or more. Will Sprint find a match, or will both partners turn down Son's money-losing asset? Bloomberg reporters Gerry Smith and Scott Moritz give host Alex Sherman their predictions. 

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Longtime Silicon Valley lawyer Rick Climan and his team have worked on some of tech's biggest-ever deals, including Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp and Intel's takeover of Altera. His experience working with tech's largest clients led him to champion a study showing that buying power -- the relative difference in size between buyer and seller -- should be used more carefully as a tool when negotiating sale prices in deals. He talks about the results, his long career, and his recent decision to leave Weil Gotshal for Hogan Lovells. 

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Scripps Networks's HGTV has become a household name (pun intended) through its popular reality programming, including Property Brothers and House Hunters. Viacom and Discovery are circling the family-owned cable programmer, which is in advanced talks to sell, according to people familiar with the matter. Bloomberg media reporter Gerry Smith and media analyst Paul Sweeney join host Alex Sherman to discuss why a deal is overdue for all three companies. 

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For U.S. IPOs, 2017 has been the year of the flop. Blue Apron has tanked since it started trading last month. Shares of Snap fetch less than $15, the lowest since its debut in March. And the Bloomberg U.S. IPO index has risen just 1.5 percent this year, underperforming the S&P 500's 10 percent gain. What's going on? Bloomberg IPO reporter Alex Barinka joins host Alex Sherman to explain the lackluster performance of Blue Apron and Snap, and how MuleSoft and Canada Goose have avoided the same fate. 

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Culture seems like a soft, intangible byproduct of mergers and acquisitions. Synergies. Tax efficiencies. Accretion. Those are empirical. That's what drives Wall Street and gives jobs to investment bankers and lawyers. But culture matters to employees, much more than financial engineering. When Trello co-founder Michael Pryor had to decide to sell his enterprise software company to Atlassian earlier this year, his decision centered around cultural fit. Atlassian president Jay Simons and Pryor recount to host Alex Sherman the ways they were convinced an acquisition was right for both companies. 

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A trifecta of deal news late last week brings Bloomberg M&A reporter Ed Hammond into the studio. He expresses admiration over the price Staples was able to get -- $6.9 billion -- from Sycamore Partners and optimism about Fox's chances to get its Sky acquisition approved. But the news isn't as rosy for Rite Aid and a smaller drugstore company called Fred's.

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TPG's latest $450 million investment values Vice Media at a whopping $5.7 billion. That's about double the size of the New York Times. One explanation: Vice's access to millennials, according to Bloomberg media reporter Gerry Smith and Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Paul Sweeney. Still, it's hard to make the numbers add up without taking a giant leap of faith. Gerry and Paul discuss with host Alex Sherman.

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