The views expressed on this podcast are those of the participants, not of Roiders' News.

Welcome to the Views Room. I'm Rob Cox, the editor of Breaking Views, the potential commentary

arm of Reuters News, coming to you from Rome, Italy. The week began with a bang in deal terms

as AT&T agreed to spin off and merge the

cornucopia of media assets it bought when it took over time Warner into a smaller rival

discovery. The transaction wasn't huge, but it was one of those rare and actually refreshing

about faces by a big company that belatedly recognizes the strategy it had been pursuing for years was

flawed. Under the telephone company's previous CEO, Randy Stevenson, AT&T got all worked up about the

need to become a content and media business. Spent over $100 billion for the owner of HBO,

Warner Studios, Looney Tunes, and CNN,

Stevenson even went toe-to-toe with Donald Trump's Justice Department to get the deal approved.

So it was kind of mind-blowing to see his successor, John Stanky, unwind the whole thing.

Lauren Loughlin and Jen Saba break it down for us.

Meantime, the merger of ride-hailing to delivery to payments giant Gojack and online shopping site Tokopedia to create an Indonesian powerhouse just a month

after Singapore-based rival Grab was valued at $40 billion in a big SPAC deal gave Yuna Galani

and Sharon Lamb a chance to discuss this emerging Southeast Asian tech scene. Finally, while I had Yunnan on the phone, I also asked her about the decision by the World Economic Forum to abandon its plans to hold its annual meeting in August in Singapore.

Back to Davos in January, it seems.

Give a listen.

Jen and Lauren, good to talk to you about this huge deal that's happened in the media

landscape in America, the unwinding of AT&T.

Talk to me a little bit about this, Jen.

You've been covering it.

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