Hans nichols is in the french alps one mile away from the site of tuesdays crash. That evening. Has there been progress . Hans yes, there has appeared as the sun sets on this ground behind me were the last helicopter appears to be taking off we have three important development. The black box that contains the voice recording recovered last night, Forensic Experts in paris believe they can retrieve the voice recording for that. Progress will be yielded from that voice recording. Francois hollande says they have recovered the casing of the second black box. This is the part of the recorder they used to log every bit of information from every bit of every part of the airplane. Number three the crash site itself while over to have disco hectares is small enough that the plane did not explode before impact. Two hectares. The plane slammed into the side of the mountain here in the french alps and that is where most of the debris is. None of the 150 bodies have been retrieved. The are still in the mountains 10 kilometers from me here. Mark what has been the main challenge for the Recovery Efforts thus far . Hans the terrain and the slope of the mountain and where the plane crashed into have made it exceedingly difficult. All throughout the day as helicopters have been taking off from this staging ground behind me, they have been lying down the valley and into this remote part of the crash is. Where the crash is. The workers have been forced to rappel up. They did establish a land route. The more important work is done by helicopter. That inability to land on the side of the mountain has slowed things down a bit. They know where it is and they have not seen debris outside of that zone. When Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel came to visit they stopped as well and saw the devastation. Both sides offering their condolences and everyone pledging to Work Together all three countries to get behind an accident that still has many mysteries. Mark hans nichols joining us live from the french alps. Lets check the other top stories we are following on this wednesday. A deal put together by Warren Buffett and 3g capital. They orchestrated a merger between kraft foods and heintz. Two years ago, buffett and 3g teamed up to acquire heintz. Craft kraft shareholders will get 49 of stock in the new company. It will generate substantial synergies which we currently expect to be about 1. 5 billion. As well as many revenue extension opportunities domestically and abroad. Mark shares of kraft are soaring today, up as much as 35 . A selloff in biotechnology and Chip Companies is dragging stocks to a third day of declines come interrupting another win declines come interrupting another run after the cut ratings on computer supplies. The nasdaq down 1. 75 . The s p also dropping down today, down 18 points. The dow jones is down over 1 trading at 17,008. Oil rising to a twoweek high in new york. Shrinking signs of u. S. Crude production gains and a falling dollar outweighing supply. A disappointing piece of Economic News today. U. S. Durable goods orders are expected unexpected lee fell in february. Unexpectedly fell in february. The previous month was revised lower. Demand for American Goods may be softening as the Global Economy slows down and a strong dollar makes them more expensive. The afghan president continued his trip to washington today, addressing a joint meeting at the u. S. Congress. His remarks follow yesterdays white house meeting with president obama who agreed into his request to adjust the timetable for u. S. Troop withdrawals. He is an adviser on middle eastern and southern Asian Affairs at the Global Intelligence and advisory firm. He joins me from toronto. Welcome to bottom line. Thank you for your time today. A lot is being made of the difference in tone between president the president and his predecessor. How would you describe it and is it conducive to improved relations between the United States and afghanistan . There is a difference in terms of personality and outlook and the way the current president is pursuing policies as opposed to what mr. Karzai was doing. They both have a common problem, which is there are a limited number of options they can choose from. Its not as if he can wave a magic wand and turn things around dramatically. The underlying geopolitical reality realities are hardwired into the system. He has to navigate them just as mr. Karzai faced them as well. Mark during his joint press conference, he said tragedy brought us together, interests unitas. Interests unitas. How are they Going Forward . It is primarily a security interest, that afghanistan does not fall back into a playground for jihadist groups. That remains at the core. The way he phrased it was he was referring to the 9 11 tragedy but the underlying reality or the purpose for which the United States and its allies went into afghanistan in the first place, they continue to exist. Although not at that level perhaps. Mark the American Military challenge has come from the taliban. With Islamic State president obama has retreated from plans to slash u. S. Forces in the country by the end of this year. Will the reversal of the timetable be enough to ensure stability in afghanistan . Depends on a number of factors. How the negotiations at the United States that the uniteds been conducting with the Taliban Movement are Going Forward. A brief opening of an office in the capital for the telegram was quickly shut down within days. There seems to be a renewed effort to negotiate and this time on the part of the kabul government. We need to see how that makes progress and the extent to which there is an under negotiation will shape u. S. Efforts to bring an end to the longest war in american history. Mark the United States has a spent 65 billion so far helping to build afghanistans army and police force. How much longer can that Financial Assistance continue . It is unclear how long the United States can sustain that level of financial input into the country. At the same time, the United States does not have a choice. The hope is as time goes by, the United States and its allies will not need to inject the same level of funds as they have in the past because of improvements in the capability of the Afghan Security forces. If there is improvement in security, with it comes to improvement in the Economic Situation in the country. We may be able to reduce financial inflows into the Security Apparatus as time goes by. Ultimately, making an economy thats a workable economy for afghanistan will be a longterm challenge. Mark in his speech, the president said you could have used this opportunity to end the partnership and return home in frustration. You did not. Thanks to the flexibility, we have made up for the loss and have regained momentum. What does that momentum now look like considering president obama did so yesterday did say yesterday that afghanistan remains a dangerous place . I think the president was referring to the enhanced capabilities of the Afghan National army and the Afghan National police. There has been a nontrivial or significant improvement in this capabilities. Those capabilities. The president is pinning his hopes that his government policy of trying to negotiate with the taliban and improving relations with pakistan could improve the situation. This is a slow process and we will have to wait and see how long we will be in this new phase, this post nato, post karzai afghanistan. Mark thank you so much for your perspective. We appreciate it. By pleasure. Mark more on one of our top stories. Julie hyman will join us with details on what could be the third biggest food and Beverage Company in north america. The heintzkraft megamerger. Mark lets get you some of the top stories we are following on this wednesday. Time is running out for greece. The country has until monday to show its reform commitments. Greece would have access to more than a billion dollars youre marked to help its banking system. Greek Officials Say greece has convinced the eurozone it will meet its economic overhaul. Officials in yemen telling the Associated Press the president has left the country by sea on a boat. The government is collapsing under an onslaught by shiite rebels. Then offered a 130,000 reward for the capture of the present. The defense minister has been taken by the rebels. At an airbase an airbase is also under rebel control. In italy, the countrys highest court is reviewing earlier convictions of amanda knox. She and her exboyfriend served four years in prison before they were acquitted in connection with the 2007 murder of her british roommate. Then they were convicted again. Knox is now in seattle and a conviction would trigger an extradition fight. They argue that knox had been tried again after her acquittal. Coming up, attitude at 2 23 p. M. Comment the budget battle on washington. Analysis of the latest inventory report. At 2 45, cory johnson will have a wrapup of day one of the facebook f8 Developers Conference in San Francisco. More on the deal creating the thirdlargest largest food and Beverage Company in north america. 3g capital N Berkshire Hathaway orchestrating the merger of kraft foods and heintz. Julie hyman has been looking at the details of the deal. This is somewhat unusual. Julie when you have a private equity firm that has taken a Company Private typically you would exit that deal by bringing the company public. In this case, heintz is going to be combining with kraft. We are looking at the value of this deal at 46 billion, not including that debt including a fusion of capital of 10 billion from 3g capital and berkshire that will pay a onetime special dividend of 60 and . 50 to the crap shareholders 60. 50 to the heintz kraft shareholders. A little bit unusual its also unusual in the fact that we cannot put a precise value on this deal because we dont know where the shares are going to trade once heintz combines with kraft. Mark how did this come together . Julie get is not exactly clear but it seems to have come together rather quickly. We heard some talk about 3g Capital Raising some cash to do some kind of deal. There was a lot talk about it being a Consumer Product deal. We saw Companies Like campbell kelloggs late last year. We are here midmarch and the deal is done. It seems to have come together rather quickly. Mark who are the winners and losers here . The two companies appear to be the losers, campbells or kelloggs. The companies who would be the suitors. A lot of these stocks are rising today because there is talk about more combinations in the industry. In terms of winners, you cannot be the guys behind 3g and Berkshire Hathaway because it seems like they are going to be able to exit this heintz transaction with an increase depending on where these shares trade. Mark what is the brazilian angle . Julie 3g is bringing more International Expertise to the situation. What the two companies were emphasizing is that kraft is going to be able to grow something it has not done in the past couple of years come bypassing more international markets. Couple of years by passing more international markets. They split two separate International Brands that were growing more quickly than the domestic brands. You are putting back together something that was once split apart. Mark the packaged put makers in the u. S. , will they start feeling the heat now . Julie were seeing sales of packaged and processed foods stagnate over the past several years. We are seeing this trend towards what is perceived as healthier fresher foods and these packaged Food Companies have been feeling the pinch. Mark julie hyman, thank you so much. Stay with us as we continue to bring you more details on the heintzkraft megadeal. Mark the latest fight in the budget battle playing out on the floor of the u. S. House of representatives this afternoon. Lawmakers are voting on not one not to come up at six different budget plans not one, not two, but six different budget plans. Peter cook is following that story. This is a different approach from the house of public and leadership. Peter it is a free for all if you will come a bid by john boehner to satisfy all the various voices in the House Republican conference. Giving each of those groups their say, if you will. He may avoid the public it is called the queen of the hill strategy. The speaker says whichever budget plan gets the most votes today will become the house budget resolution. It is not normally how this works. The democratic plants will go nowhere because they dont have the votes in the house to get it done. The question is which republican plan will prevail. The company tom price of georgia they both cut spending by more than five 5 billion. They both repeal obamacare. The one big difference is defense spending. It offsets 20. 5 billion of that funding. Defense hawks dont like the idea of those offsets. They prefer a second plan that boosts the funding and contains no upset whatsoever. Offset whatsoever. We are considering all of these budgets. It is the most democratic way you can consider this. The budget that gets the most votes goes on to final passage. That is a great way to do it. Peter the debate is underway right now. The voting will take place this afternoon. It is fiscal hawks versus defense hawks. Mark what is the next step in the budget battle . Peter assuming the house approves the budget resolution later on today, we expect the version john boehner is talking about, this moves over to the senate where they are debating their own budget resolution today. Then the process begins after the spring recess, reconciling the differences between the two plans and spending parameters for congress for the next fiscal year and setting up a showdown with the president. Mark peter cook, thank you. U. S. Crude Oil Inventories continue to rise prompt concerns about running out of space to store oil. The latest on climbing inventories, next. Mark welcome back to the second halfhour of bottom line. Im Mark Crumpton in new york. Thank you first thing with us. Lets get to the top stories we are following at this hour. Warren buffett calls it his kind of transaction, putting together two worldclass organizations. 3g has agreed to acquire kraft foods in partnership with Berkshire Hathaway. The company will be merged with heintz. Kraft shareholders will receive a, nation of stocks and cash a combination of stock and cash. The 3g crowd lets assume they have a good cash flow methodology and understand how to create value. Mark 3g and but are no stranger to this kind of deal. They teamed up to buy heintz three years ago. Three americans were on board the plane that crashed yesterday in the french alps. Most of the 1 50 p. M. 150 people on board were german or spanish. Crews are back at the site of the crash today but the rugged territory is making their work difficult. Investigators are in evaluating the voice recorder. Crude up 3. 5 today, trading at 49. 22. Lets take a closer look at the energy market. U. S. Crude inventories and production climbed to the highest level in more than three decades. The massive oversupply is set to continue for the first half of this year. Hes global head of oil research at associate welcome back to bottom line. Lets take a look at whats going on today. Your reaction to the Oil Inventory report. What do the supply fundamentals look like now . There is a lot of oil around. We are swimming in crude in the u. S. There is a lot of dynamics today. Some things have caused prices to bounce rather than react. We have a weaker dollar gasoline is strong some of the grades are strong. You have things like yemen the saudis are massing troops on the border mark the president leaving the country. That gets the market twitchy. Cushing is very tight and getting very full. There is an issue there and it could get worse in the coming weeks. With the exception of days like today we do expect for the next 24 weeks to see continuing pressure on the fronts of the curve. Mark there is no uniform standard since operators are at liberty to set their own levels of contingency, do we know how close to full we are . They do put out some pretty good numbers twice a year. They dont update it every week or month. If you look at what they are saying, this is a fair amount of crude space for storing crude in the u. S. Outside of cushing. You can say the same thing for the rest of the world. Cushing, there is an issue. We dont think we are bumping up against constraints. Mark your colleague said in a report this week, the next few months will be detrimental for oil. How so . Big picture in the Second Quarter, we expect huge global stock builds. That is bearish, whether its in the u. S. Or europe or asia crude or products, onshore or offshore committee big number. Offshore, its a big number. The shift from wti to brent in the west, we are at a refinery it starts to go up in april. The pressure ships to brent. Mark oil is up 11 . What will that mean for opec . Opec stays the course. Saudi arabia and their gulf arab allies will allow this to continue. They will not actively try to and the supply. Mark how is this making the Global Supply glut worse . The issue is u. S. Shale oil. We have seen no impact on shale production. Mark are you surprised by that . The rig count down and there is no slowing in production . There is something in todays report which is interesting production for the lower 48 states as flat. Is flat. We are a month or two away from declines in shale oil. The market has been waiting for that but we are about to see it. Mark how does the strong u. S. Dollar factor into what we are saying . It is a factor big picture , more about the oil fundamentals. The dollar is secondary. On any given day, today is a perfect example, it can be a big market mover. Its something we have to keep an eye on. Mark all of this being said what does this mean for the u. S. Consumer . The u. S. Consumer, the endusers will continue to see pretty low prices. The low point is the Second Quarter when we start to see some moderate uplift in the second half, but nothing crazy. 45 wti going up to 54 in the next three quarters of the year. Still relatively depressed. Mark good to see you, sir. Thank you so much. Up next, todays latin america report. Cory johnson has details from the facebook f8 Developers Conference in San Francisco and comments from Mark Zuckerberg. Mark welcome back. It is time for todays latin america report. Results centralbank scales back its report for the rial, ending sales of exchange swaps. The central bank said it will stop the options at the end of this month. It will continue rolling back old contracts equivalent to selling dollars in the futures market depending on demand and may still hold auctions for dollar loans. The program was not enough to keep the brazilian currency from plunging 26 over the past year to the weakest level since 2003. Coming up, pressure on oil markets come offshore Drilling Companies need to find billions of dollars of new work to meet sales estimates. Which company is most in need to sign new contracts when bottom line continues in just a moment. Mark welcome back. Lets get you the top stories we are following on this wednesday. Warren buffett calls it his kind of transaction. Putting together two worldclass organizations. Kraft foods will merge with heintz in a deal put together by Berkshire Hathaway and 3g. Kraft shareholders will receive a combination of stock and cash. Investigators hope the damage black box can help solve the mystery of the german plane crash. The cockpit voice recorder is still usable. Theyre hoping it will help them learn why the jet plunged 38,000 feet into the french alps yesterday. All 150 people on board were killed. Three of them were american. Afghanistans president was on capitol hill today addressing the joint session of congress. He met with president obama yesterday. Mr. Obama agreed not to reduce the number of u. S. Troops in afghanistan for the remainder of this year. The president wants the u. S. Troops to stay so they can help counter attacks by the taliban. Coming up and 2 55, scarlet fu tells us what shareholders will be seeing as the result of that kraftheintz megadeal. At four clock p. M. , Marketing Strategies at the ncaa. Facebooks f8 Developers Conference is underway in San Francisco. 500 developers are attending the conference. Mark zuckerberg just gave the keynote speech. Cory johnson is covering the conference. Why is Mark Zuckerberg talking to developers . Cory developers, developers, developers. It is important to every company out there and import into facebook. Facebook posting about getting over 8 billion to developers. Facebook depends on a lot of the great people in the world of technology who dont work at facebook. To use facebook as a place to do their work. One of the reasons why they have this big focus here. There was talk about their Facebook Messenger service and to turn that messenger business which has 600 million active users to use that Facebook Messenger business as a platform. Listen to what Mark Zuckerberg had to say. Zuckerberg today, we are introducing messenger platform. A new platform that developers [applause] its a new platform that developers can use to build apps that help people connect through the more than 6 Million People using messenger that 600 Million People using messenger every day. Cory think about what happened to the world when apple opened its phone to outside developers. You could hear the response. Those developers who have access to a stream of 600 million users all of whom have a wallet, that is good news. Mark how big could this be . Cory this gets big when you start to think about the different kinds of businesses they could be in. I was surprised to hear of the consumer facing product with a focus on business. Talking about partnering with a Company Based in San Francisco lots of other ways Facebook Messenger could be used for business. Zuckerberg think about how useful it would be if you can message a business and get information, make a reservation by something buy something come exchange shipping information. We are introducing a way for you to communicate with businesses through messenger. Cory we will have a lot more of that on bloomberg west later. A strangely beautiful sunny day in march in San Francisco. Figuring out new ways to use facebook as the business grows at an incredible pace and massive scale. Mark cory johnson joining us from outside facebooks f8 Developers Conference. Drillers would need to look for a lot more work 10 billion of more work to meet analyst sales forecasts. Alix steel joins me now with more. A lot of work. That is a lot of work. A group of companies that provide services for oil Companies Like transocean all told there they are respected to generate 30 billion in sales this year. Their backlog is 20 billion. They need to find a lot more work. Trans ocean is one of the worst off. They would have to secure 15 contracts, work every single day of the year to meet the estimates. Part of the issue is not only do you have Oil Companies carrying back there drilling, but cutting some of their costs. They have the pricing power. They can go to the drillers and say want to keep my business, i want a cost reduction. Some analysts are putting that at 30 . Mark what is the upside . A frack log. You have a lot of Oil Companies drilling their wells but not completing their wells. Producers are preparing to wrap up activity this year if prices wind up recovering. Production could be skewed to the upside. On the one hand, you might have producers working a bit more because they have this instant production ready to go. On the flipside, that could put some kind of permanent lid on oil prices. It doesnt take that long. If you days come a few weeks. That keeps prices even lower. Mark street smart coming up in a few minutes. We are talking about commodities and regulation. The president and chairman of the cme will be talking to us. Talking not only about what the fed should be doing in terms of regulating wall street, but about the commodities business. Getting out of their physical trading commodities business and storage business and transportation business. We will talk about what that means for the industry Going Forward. Mark any surprises in the report today . In terms of the storage for the u. S. . You had crude production that rose only 3000 barrels a day, the smallest increase since january. Perhaps the cutting in rates is helping. In riggs is helping. Mark scarlet fu has been looking at the kraftheintz deal. Bottom line continues in just a moment. Mark welcome back. Taking a look at bloomberg brackets. The mens basketball tournament weve brought together a group of titans from the world of business and finance to take their best shot at the bracket. Each of the participants generating generously donating 10,000, the pot going to the winners choice. John donahoe on top. The ceo of marathon you can follow along at bloomberg. Com charitybracket. Warren buffett teaming up with 3g, this time to bring kraft foods and heinz to the same shelf. Scarlet fu has been looking at the fine print. This is pretty unusual. Scarlet they call that a horizontal merger because its the same aisle. Youve got heinz taken private in 2013, kicking off the love affair between Warren Buffett and brazilian billionaires. You have kraft split off from the international business. You have 10 billion of capital from 3g and buffet. The kraftheinz. Berkshire hathaway 3g get the controlling stake. Kraft shareholders get one share of the new company plus a special dividend being funded by 3g and Warren Buffett. 16 to two cents a share. They get to retain krafts regular dividend. 16. 52 a share. The benefit of the company being owned by what some would argue the most talented investors in the world the combined Companies Looking at adding to earnings in 2017. Mark ed hammond call this a this calls this a complex deal. Scarlet when they take out a company, they take it out and cut costs and at that and ipo it back into the market. This is a reverse ipo. This is not hammond a one and one. This is advanced mergers. M and a 101. Kraft has 10 billion in debt. Heinz will refinance its highyield debt. On top of that, it is calling back the preferred share that it pays to Warren Buffett with a 9 annual dividend. Mark the deal is supposed to close in the second half of the year. It took about 100 and 13 days 113 days for berkshire and 3g to complete the heinz deal. That required approval from chinese regulators. They are the wildcard. This deal would need the chinese approval as well as european and american approval as well. Perhaps longer than winter to 13 days longer than 113 days. Mark get the latest headlines at the top of the hour on Bloomberg Radio and bloomberg. Com. Street smart is next. 60 minutes left. Stocks are dropping today. Dragging equities down for a third day. Plus we have a special focus on the megamerger of the year. Kraft and heinz. We will look at how 3g capital and Warren Buffett orchestrated the deal and what they may have planned next. Street smart starts now