Discovery Communications Inc

Disney Could Have Bought Time Warner in 2016

“About $20 billion of long positions were liquidated last week,” Sam Bankman-Fried, the C.E.O. of the crypto derivatives exchange FTX, told DealBook. “In terms of price movements: the biggest part of it is liquidations,” he said, suggesting the worst is over. But he also noted news from China late Friday of a crackdown on Bitcoin mining and trading. This added to other news of official scrutiny that has spooked crypto investors in recent days:

Financial regulators in Hong Kong announced support for a legislative proposal to create a licensing scheme for virtual asset exchanges and to ban trading for investors without a minimum of $1 million in their portfolios.
The Bank of Canada cited crypto concerns in its annual financial system review, saying that “the rapid evolution in cryptoasset markets is an emerging financial vulnerability.”
Gary Gensler, the chair of the S.E.C., said that American regulators “should be ready to bring cases” involving wrongdoing in crypto markets.
The Treasury Department noted in a report on tax proposals that “cryptocurrency already poses a significant detection problem by facilitating illegal activity broadly including tax evasion.” The I.R.S. said it would require more extensive reporting of crypto transactions.

Companies with Bitcoin on their balance sheets may be getting nervous. For accounting purposes, crypto is valued at its purchase price. If it goes up in value, this isn’t reflected in a company’s accounts but if it falls, the value is impaired and puts a dent in quarterly profits. Let’s check in on the three big corporate Bitcoin holders — Tesla, MicroStrategy, and Square — shall we?

Tesla: The electric vehicle company bought $1.5 billion in Bitcoin last quarter, at an average price of about $34,700 per coin, not far from its current price. Elon Musk has signaled that Tesla isn’t selling, but it probably isn’t buying, either.

MicroStrategy: The business intelligence software company has spent about $2.2 billion on Bitcoin, at an average price of $24,450. The company bought more last week and is still sitting on big gains.
Square: The payments company, led by the Twitter C.E.O. Jack Dorsey, bought two batches of Bitcoin for its treasury — $50 million in October at a price of about $10,600 and $170 million in February at a price of around $51,000. It took a $20 million impairment on its holdings last quarter, stemming from the drop in value from its most recent purchase. It doesn’t plan to buy any more, its C.F.O. said this month.

“Yeah, I do.”

— Barry Diller, when asked by Andrew on CNBC’s Squawk Box whether he thinks Disney’s C.E.O., Bob Chapek, has pushed his predecessor, Bob Iger, to the sidelines, as he suggested earlier in the interview. (And “not very nicely,” per Diller.)

Lazard enlists an admiral

The investment bank Lazard has hired William McRaven, the retired Navy admiral who led the U.S. Special Operations Command, as a senior adviser for its financial advisory business. McRaven oversaw the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden.

His hiring underscores business’ concerns about geopolitics. The pandemic has highlighted the potential business risks of global interconnectedness and China’s increasing assertiveness, among the many fault lines that multinational companies face.

McRaven is the latest financial outsider to join Lazard. Memorably, the firm hired the late Vernon Jordan, the civil rights leader with a gold-plated Rolodex, in 2000. “It’s not a place that is big on golfing,” said Peter Orszag, the head of financial advisory at Lazard, himself a veteran of the Clinton and Obama administrations. Bringing such people on board brings both intellectual “content” and deep relationships around the world, Orszag said.

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>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

AT&T, in Abrupt Turn, Will Shed Media Business in Deal With Discovery

The merger is a significant about-face for AT&T, a telecommunications giant that got into the media business with its Time Warner foray. Industry experts questioned AT&T’s deal, and now the spinoff indicates a failed acquisition strategy.

John Stankey, the chief executive of AT&T, has looked at its media business as a way to keep its phone customers from switching to other companies. AT&T Wireless subscribers get discounts and free access to HBO Max. A deal with Discovery could include stipulations that customers would maintain those benefits.

Before he took over as chief executive last year, Mr. Stankey was the company’s chief mergers strategist. But his track record has been spotty. In addition to planning AT&T’s purchase of Time Warner, he was behind the company’s $48 billion acquisition of the satellite operator DirecTV in 2015. The service has been bleeding customers for years; in February, AT&T sold part of the business to the private equity firm TPG for about $16 billion, a third of what it originally paid.

For Discovery, the WarnerMedia deal could finally give Mr. Zaslav the size and scale he has long sought. A swashbuckling executive who can recall ratings figures off the top of his head, Mr. Zaslav represents the last of the old guard in media, a hobnobbing mogul known for hosting lavish get-togethers at his house in the Hamptons.

The new company would create a new kind of media behemoth, one that is still living off the fat profits of old-school cable, while spending those profits (and more) on streaming.

Even with increased competition, HBO remains a standout in television, and last year, once again, captured more Emmys than any other network, studio or platform, including Netflix. It has several hit shows, including “Succession,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Barry” and “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver.” It also has a huge library that includes “The Sopranos,” “Game of Thrones” and “Sex and the City.”

The Warner Bros. TV studio likewise has produced successful shows for both its parent company, WarnerMedia, and outside studios with series like “Ted Lasso” (Apple TV+), “Riverdale” (CW), “The Flight Attendant” (HBO Max) and “The Bachelor” (ABC). The Warner Bros. movie studio recently released movies like “Godzilla vs. Kong,” “Mortal Kombat” and has big coming releases like “Dune” and “The Matrix 4.”

Brooks Barnes and Lauren Hirsch contributed reporting.

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AT&T’s Big Deal With Discovery Unwinds Billions in Mergers

Goldbelly’s growth surpassed its expectations. Sales more than quadrupled last year, and it nearly doubled the number of restaurants on its platform, to 850. That, according to Joe Ariel, its co-founder and C.E.O., was because the company allows restaurants like Di Fara pizzeria in Brooklyn and Parkway Bakery and Tavern in New Orleans to go national: “We’re basically opening up a 3,000-mile radius for restaurants.”

Can that good fortune continue? As in-person dining resumes across the U.S., Ariel concedes that Goldbelly’s phenomenal growth rate last year “is not going to happen forever.” But its newest backers believe that restaurants will keep making online sales part of their businesses. Goldbelly is also counting on maintaining its lead by spending more on marketing, offering livestreamed cooking classes and relying on the loyalty of chefs.

Ariel didn’t deny that the company has its eye on an I.P.O. “In the future, we do want to be a public company,” he told DealBook.

The crypto tax thicket

Cryptocurrency’s rise to prominence is reflected in the latest U.S. tax documents (due today, in case you forgot). This year, a virtual currency question tops Form 1040, the individual income tax return form, right after the personal identifying information. The I.R.S. wants to know: “At any time during 2020, did you receive, sell, send, exchange, or otherwise acquire any financial interest in any virtual currency?”

Yes means no, sort of. If you only bought crypto with “real currency” then you aren’t required to answer “yes,” per the I.R.S. But this guidance is not binding, which means you can’t entirely rely on it. This relatively simple question, which is generating consternation among accountants, reflects the greater state of disarray when it comes to digital asset taxation.

“There’s very limited guidance on crypto,” Michael Meisler, a lawyer who leads EY’s crypto tax center, told DealBook. Basic tax principles apply to digital assets and many concepts translate from the physical to digital realm, but crypto is evolving fast. The approach taxpayers take depends on their tolerance for risk, Meisler said.

Cryptocurrency is property for tax purposes. That means that there is a tax liability for every sale or purchase using crypto, said Amy Kim, the chief policy officer of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, a trade group: “Imagine reporting the gain or loss on every cup of coffee you bought at Starbucks.”

Big Crypto wants the I.R.S. to flip its script. The tax authorities have engaged in an “enforcement-focused approach,” Kim said. “We believe this approach should be reversed — issue practical guidance, then enforce that guidance against those who do not comply.”

THE SPEED READ

Deals

Alex Rodriguez and the Jet.com cofounder Marc Lore agreed to buy the N.B.A.’s Minnesota Timberwolves and the W.N.B.A.’s Minnesota Lynx for $1.5 billion. (NYT)
George Soros’s investment fund was among those that scooped up stocks at a steep discount when they were offloaded by Archegos during its implosion. (Bloomberg)
The influential proxy adviser I.S.S. backed three of four candidates for Exxon Mobil’s board put forth by the climate-minded activist investor Engine No. 1. (Bloomberg)

Politics and policy

Rural areas are counting on President Biden’s infrastructure proposal, in particular its expansion of broadband access, to help attract more workers. (NYT)
Proponents of Biden’s planned revival of the International Entrepreneur Rule to grant start-up founders special visas say it will create thousands of new jobs. (Axios)

Tech

“The Deadly Toll of Amazon’s Trucking Boom” (The Information)
Goldman Sachs’s online consumer banking unit lost another top executive as its C.F.O., Sherry Ann Mohan, defected to JPMorgan Chase. (CNBC)

Best of the rest

Leslie Moonves, who was fired from CBS in 2018, will receive nothing from the $120 million the company set aside in a potential severance package. (NYT)
Some advice on how to prevent the re-emergence of workplace cliques as people return to the office. (FT)
The publicly traded New Jersey deli with a $100 million market cap that David Einhorn identified as a symptom of irrational markets has fired its C.E.O. (CNBC)

We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.

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