Righters is reporting that softbank is preparing to approach tmobile. David faber has been covering this story. He joins us at this late hour at post 9. David, what is your take . Interesting. Excuse me while i get rid of that phone call. I really wanted that phone call, too. That was the key one. Why right now . Why right now . But, you know, kelly, i cant confirm what is being reported by reuters specific to whether or not they are preparing to approach tmobile. That thing, softbank which controls sprint. I think many people speculated on that potential outcome ever since we saw the man who controls softbank visit then president elect trump promising to create jobs. One of the very first visitors we should add. There are some pictures. One of the early visitors, exactly. Holding up that piece of paper with the amount of jobs on it. And so a lot of people have been speculating on that possibility, certainly, that once this auction for the the incentive auction for the broadcast spectrum concluded, which tmobile was a part, sprint wasnt, that perhaps you would start to see conversations take place. It has been something ive reported that tmobile would be interested potentially in a deal if, in fact, its gee, john legere, could run the combined company. Still key question whether they wanted to consolidate, deconsolidate. The biggest question, guys, is on the antitrust front. Despite that visit to trump tower and that the president could get involved in terms of antitrust law, i think there is still a very large question to be asked here as to whether or not you could ever see the doj, which is well studied in these matters and which already had indicated it would not allow tmobile sprint merger a number of years back change their tact, particularly on a week, consider this, where verizon decided to go to an unlimited data plan. At t followed through today with that same thing not just if youre a directv customer all of which points to the competition that is taking place in the wireless market that antitrust enforcers will tell you in part, michael, is because of the very decision they made not to go from four to three. Cre consumer friendly right now. You have the industry makeup. We also dont have any real sense of an antitrust approach from this white house, right . Its so early on that we tonight have a sense of how they would treat deals, who the appointees of the relevant players might be. We dont. Its hard to say. The fact is the doj has a team that has always been on this. Staff members have been a part of this for a long period of time. Thats where the review would take place. If you are tmobile, do you want to go through that again . Now you once you agree to be acquired by at t, that got turned down but you got an enormous amount of spectrum and a huge booby prize in billions of dollars of money, too. Then you didnt move ahead with sprint, what would sprint have to give them to make them at least say, okay, well consider it. Maybe its john legere running the combined company. Maybe its a willingness of sprint to step back entirely but its not clear thats enough. The one thing that seems like it could change the landscape are the kinds of talks that are out there. Comcast will launch a service. You sometimes hear verizon and comcast talking. If you start to see that kind of cross pollination, does that all of a sudden make it easier to describe the companies not just going from four to three, but this whole industry kind of reshaping itself . Thats an interesting point. Thats one we could see. The mvno that comcast has with verizon. Some questions as to whether our Parent Company comcast would have interest in buying a wireless outright. Tmobile. Also for consolidation within the cable industry. We know that verizon has thought about the idea of trying to buy charter communications. Right. So theres a lot of things moving around here, but sprint and tmobile, certainly not a surprise if in fact tmo is approached by softbank. Will they sit down and hammer out a deal with the antitrust overhang. Would they consider doing Something Else even along the lines of buying a dish which is another name to throw in there in this consolidation. Of course they started with an even bigger potential deal. Talk about kraft heinz, approach of unilever. Animating stocks across the sector. Sara eisen has been over that all day. David has some news on this. Yeah. Yeah. Were going to stay on this. Sara and i are going to talk about this. Joining us at 9 00. This has been the big story of the day. This is a real potential deal, not one where the company is preparing. The offer was made in the last few weeks from kraft heinz to buy unilever. It was then outlined by unilever when they confirmed the deal, 150 share Purchase Price made up of both stock and cash amounting to 143 billion but it was rejected by unilever. And what we can tell you at this point after a day here of sort of reporting is the high likelihood that under u. K. Takeover law, by the way, they have 28 days at kraft heinz to actually come to an agreement or make a formal proposal, but what is likely to happen here is not that kraft heinz is going to go what we would call hostile. In other words, if, in fact, they are not able to get the board of unilever to agree to a deal in the next 28 days, expectations are they will simply step out as opposed to take it to shareholders as is, youre right, under u. K. Takeover law. And that is for any number of reasons. Certainly unilever made it clear in their press release today that the price was not adequate for them. They didnt see any real reason to continue to negotiate, but it is certainly the hope i think on the part of kraft heinz that they can change their mind. One certainly expects that they have a higher potential bid there to make, but there are a number of impediments. You dont have any idea where the government could stand on that in either the u. K. Or the netherlands. As importantly, there is another, and this came up a lot when mylan was fighting off schticting. It controls a lot of parts of the company. You have a netherlands part and anglo part. If you want to buy the nv part you have to go through the trust. Now they will vote their shares according to the way their depository shareholders want them to, but they have an Important Role here. Again, it is another potential impediment to making a deal more difficult were kraft heinz to want to go directly to shareholders over objections of the board. Sara, you know about these companies. Do they raise the price to something more appealing to unilever here . Thats one possibility. Schticting and booby prizes aside. The context is interesting. As someone who covers these companies, everyone expected heinz, craft hindes and 3g, the private equity firm run by brazilians, to make the deal. Everyone expected that in the food base. Unilever is only half food business. Its more than half consumer products, shampoos, axe deodorants, dove soaps. This would be the first foray into that area. Its peeked a lot of interest. It potentially makes it a little more difficult. This is a company that is both british and dutch. It has headquarters in both places so, first of all, kraft heinz could be taking advantage of a big currency move. The british pound has devalued 20 over the dollar in the last two years. Its made it certainly cheaper, but the 3g playbook as david knows well is to slash costs, boost margins, boost profitability. All could have potential here with unilever, which has been growing slowly and struggling in emerging markets but it could mean job cuts. In this political environment with such a Major International deal, it would be the second biggest cross border deal, that could be a high burden. When you put together the set of potential political ramifications from it coupled with the actual existence of this foundation that owns a lot of controls a lot of the stock and may have a say in how its voted and the boards rejection pretty soundly of the initial offer, well have to wait and see. In the next 28 days will be key not to say that craft heinz and their 3g part of the 3g family arent very good at figuring out a way to get to an end on a deal. Of course, theyre aware of all of these potential complications, structural complexity of the deal. Maybe they felt like this was the highest quality, most attractive asset in their space in the world, lets go for that first and then go to plan b afterwards. It may be. To saras point though, somewhat curious they are going after a company that is more dominant in household products or consumer Package Goods than it is in food. By the way, on the hostile takeover again, they have used warren buffet. He wouldnt want to be part of this. Highly unbe likely to go down this route if they cant get unilever to recommend it to shareholders. The Common Thread between the packaged food business and the household products business right now is that both of these industries have been struggling with top line growth. They cannot grow since the recession this has been the problem. Consumers are going healthier, going online. Look at nestle yesterday. Thats a common theme you have seen. That means two things, ripe for acquisitions and ripe for cost cuts. Thats been the playbook with Food Companies with the 3g heinz kraft speculation brewing, and now thats going to be a bigger theme at the household products makers. Its interesting to see the two groups of stocks moving in completely Different Directions today. Mondolese is a loser on the day, so is general mills, so is campbe campbells soup. Those are the ripe targets. Colgate, for instance, gets 75 of its sales overseas shooting right up to the top of the s p. Well see if theres a white knight that comes in here if they raise the price. David and sara, thank you so much. Exciting friday here. Be sure to tune in to squawk on the street. Sarah will have an exclusive interview with irene rosenfeld. Mark ibel is here, keith bliss joins us over there on the floor and our own Rick Santelli is here as well. Keith, let me just ask you, what does it say to you that were starting to see a bit of a deal making boon if you want to call it that . We fully expected it in 2017, not only on the ipo front but the m a front. You have blockbuster deals. Softbank is coming in making big moves. I dont know if everybody rel e realizes this. Theyre potentially making a play for tmobile to consolidate that industry. Thats healthy for the stock market. Thats one of the reasons why you see the stock market stay up, stay healthy, stay pretty resilient. If you think of all the political ak krim money, in years past that would have sunk the stock market pretty well. If you take a look at the fundamental and technical setup, it doesnt seem like the market cares a whole heck of a lot about whats going on in washington. People are anxious to be in the market, anxious to do deals. Mark, you know, a lot of this merger talk is one other way that its almost as if its a bull market acting like a bull market again. Youre adding on to these alltime highs. Theres been a reluctance for the market to stay down. Where do you feel its gotten to and what the potential is for the next several months . Yeah, the more expensive markets continue to get more expensive. We can see the u. S. Moving up whether its based on earnings or the takeover talk that youve been talking about. We think from a valuation standpoint at some point valuations matter. Within our multiasset framework we think its important. Others are seeing that theres values outside the u. S. , whether theyre in europe or whether theyre in emerging markets. Expand a little bit on that, mark. Is it because of the currency plays or just the fact that those markets are less over valued, if you want to call it that . Yeah. I think you start with valuation. I think you can look at earnings. While its been a good earnings season for us in the states up 5 , european earnings will be up double digits before its all said and done. Valuations are a little bit cheaper. You have currency in there. Look at Central Banks. Well raise rates two times, maybe three times this year. I think its the right time to do that. Other Central Banks are playing our playbook. We think when you add valuation, cycle, sentiment into the marketplace theres just better opportunities across the board outside than inside the u. S. Rick, doesnt seem as if any of these potential big corporate buyers are doing any kind of a market timing thing, but certainly the context is very accommodating financial markets, not just that we have low Interest Rates still even with the rise that weve had, but the credit markets have remained so strong and basically enabling a lot of this risk taking that weve seen out there. Yes. I think, mike, that is very telling. I think if people could just clear the political bias zone, meaning all the things going on with politics, make their investing decisions, quote, unquote, more uncertain, lets look at the landscape we have. Ppi headline up. 6. Biggest month over month change. You had cpi headline up. 6. The biggest increase since february of 2013. You had year over year cpi up 2. 5 . Biggest since march of 2012. While all thats going on this week tens are unchanged, twos, thirtys, fives, unchanged. The dow down 35 is up over 300 on the week. So in my opinion, you continue to check to the highest market and thats equities. Still calling the shots. Interest rates arent only cooperating, theyre basically comatose sitting on the year after the week weve had with inflation data. Certainly are, rick. Thanks very much. Appreciate it, guys. We have to run from here. Thank you, rick, mark, and keith bliss as well. We have some news on petroleum demand. Lets send it over to dom chu forthat. Guys, mike kelley, the American Petroleum institute is out. The latest numbers show that total petroleum deliveries rose by 1. 2 over the same time last year to 19. 3 barrels per day. That count is the highest for a january in the last nine years. But if you drill down into motor gasoline deliveries, which is more linked to consumer demand, that total amount dropped by 2. 6 to an average 8. 4 Million Barrels per day which is the lowest demand in three years. Earlier today baker hughs announced the latest oil recount went higher by six rigs. That would make it the fifth straight week to added oil rigs. Dom, thank you. Keep an eye on oil prices. 45 minutes to go. Dows down 35. The transports are higher by four or five points. The nasdaq is also higher. You can see the dow is pretty evenly split. United health care dragging down the dow today after the Justice Department joined a lawsuit over Medicare Advantage. Thats a billing issue. Up next, well look at the potential fallout for United Health. President trump touting job creation at boeings plant in South Carolina. Well bring you the highlights. Thats still to come on the closing bell. Uh, yeah. Its over, larry. What is . The whole wheelie thing. What do you mean . I just got this baby to get around the plant floor. Right, but now Ge Technology monitors every machine. Yeah, it brings massive amounts of information right to you. So you dont need that. Well, it makes me look young and uh. With it. Time to move on. Oh ill move on. Right into the future. Backwards. Youre going backwards. The futures all around us not just on your little tablet, my friend. Capital street and our own bertha combert bertha coombs. What do you think the prospects are for a big fine settlement against them . Medicare advantage is an insanely popular program. So these are the plans that run the medicare benefit. As far as the fallout for united, look, if justice is getting involved in a whistleblower suit, that could mean theres some there there. There could be a period of overhang and investigation. So this will take some time to play out but, sure, there could be other plans involved. I think the program is pretty viable. The issue of up coding is not a new one. Seven years ago there were some upcoding provisions inserted into Medicare Advantage rates and that was a whole seven years ago. Bertha, you know, the other stocks besides unitedhealth care have been hurt, down 2 or so. Whats the sense out there that there might be added legal or Regulatory Risk or people pulling apart this entire food chain of Health Care Services . To look at what the case is, theres a whistleblower case. They said that the Insight Group that looks at data for coding basically sort of rigged the way they looked at it. They looked back at a lot of these Different Cases where they billed the government. They only looked at the ones where they under billed, sort of did a heads we win, tails you lose kind of audit. Not just for united but for other companies that they service for according to the overall lawsuit. Back in 2009 united settled a similar sort of suit involving this same unit that had to do with only looking at the lowest rates for reimbursement. In that case they settled for 350 million. The company says it is going to vigorously defend itself in this case. This is one of the issues that is bipartisan. We may not agree on how to shape the Overall Health reform, but they all agree that we shouldnt have the Health System getting over billed. Any sense of how big these fines and damages could be . I probably couldnt hazard a guess, but i just wanted to echo what bertha said, that combatting fraud and abuse is really a bipartisan initiative. Its like motherhood and apple pie, whether its plans, whether its hospitals, whether its other government contractors, its something that the Congress Takes seriously and will continue to take seriously. And, bertha, of course, you know, this news comes as weve seen two plan mergers dissolve, not going to happen at this stage. You saw aetna come out and raise its dividend. Its a big buy back when a merger breaks up. Is there any sense that the industry is more generally back on its heels especially not knowing whats going to come out of obamacare reform . That is the issue. We did get some coming out of cms trying to sort of stabilize and tighten up the rules that allowed people to kind of come into the system, incur a lot of charges and then leave and not pay for insurance. A lot of ac