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<ul><li><keyword id="6358963" type="DEFINITION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Warren-Buffett">Warren Buffett</keyword>'s dealmaker struck an $11 billion deal to acquire <keyword id="9615752" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="multiplan">MultiPlan</keyword> this month, marking the biggest "blank-check" takeover to date.</li><li>Former Citi banker <keyword id="703495" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Michael-Klein">Michael Klein</keyword> got to know MultiPlan and its boss when he advised Buffett's <keyword id="6362665" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="berkshire-hathaway">Berkshire Hathaway</keyword> on a potential purchase of the healthcare group in 2013, the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/73357737-38b9-4daa-b856-167c85a6eeab">Financial Times reported on Tuesday</a>.</li><li>Klein's history with Buffett includes persuading him to invest in Dow Chemical in 2009, and helping to convince him not to pursue a takeover of Unilever by Kraft Heinz in 2017.</li><li>The Wall Street rainmaker's advisory team includes ex-Apple design chief Jony Ive, and Berkshire holds a $96 billion stake in Apple.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul>Warren Buffett's dealmaker recently struck the biggest "blank-check" takeover in history. He reportedly owes the <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/stocks/brk-b-stock">Berkshire Hathaway</a> chief for putting the target on his radar.Michael Klein, a former Citi banker, closed the $11 billion acquisition of US healthcare group MultiPlan by his Churchill Capital III investment vehicle <a href="https://www.multiplan.us/multiplan-and-churchill-capital-corp-iii-reach-agreement-to-combine/">earlier this month</a>.Churchill Capital III is one of Klein's four SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition vehicles, which are designed to take companies public by acquiring or merging with them.Read More: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/stock-picks-to-buy-for-outperformance-most-innovative-companies-bofa-2020-7" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">BANK OF AMERICA: Buy these 9 stocks poised to crush the market in any market environment as they spend heavily on innovation</a>Klein advised Berkshire when it looked at acquiring MultiPlan in 2013, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/73357737-38b9-4daa-b856-167c85a6eeab">the Financial Times reported</a> on Tuesday. The deal didn't happen, but Klein became familiar with both the company and CEO Matt Tabak during that period, the newspaper said.Klein has worked with Buffett on several deals over the years. He persuaded the famed investor to buy $3 billion worth of Dow Chemical's preferred stock as part of the chemicals giant's $15 billion takeover of rival Rohm &amp; Haas in 2009, <a href="https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b150qb65j4bbb7/michael-kleins-freelance-deal-making">according to Institutional Investor</a>.He also helped to convince Buffett to scrap Kraft Heinz's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kraft-confirms-unilever-merger-approach-2017-2">proposed $143 billion takeover</a> of Unilever in 2017. The banker called the Berkshire chief to highlight political concerns around the deal and connect him with Unilever's boss, then Kraft Heinz pulled its offer hours later, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/27/dealmaker-michael-klein-helped-kill-kraft-heinz-bid-for-unilever.html">CNBC reported</a>.<h2>Other connections to Buffett</h2>Churchill Capital III is buying MultiPlan from Hellman &amp; Friedman, which itself acquired the healthcare group from a division of CV Starr &amp; Co, an insurance-and-investing conglomerate run by former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg that <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-greenberg-starr/greenberg-channels-buffett-in-post-aig-comeback-idUSBREA1I24B20140219">people have compared to Berkshire</a>.Read More: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/real-estate-investing-strategy-subdividing-large-lots-flipping-leka-devatha-2020-7" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Leka Devatha quit a cushy corporate career to start flipping houses. She breaks down how she made $1 million on a single deal by supercharging a simple strategy.</a>Klein's firm, Klein &amp; Co, <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1774675/000114420419032128/tv523371_s1a.htm">houses a group of experts</a> called Archimedes Advisors. They include former Ford CEO Alan Mulally, ex-CBS chairman Joe Ianniello, and former Apple design chief Jony Ive, the Financial Times said.Berkshire is one of Apple's biggest investors with a $96 billion stake. Buffett has described the tech giant as Berkshire's "<a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/warren-buffetts-90-billion-apple-stake-43-percent-entire-portfolio-2020-7-1029371771#">third business</a>" after insurance and railroads.Klein's record for the largest US-based <keyword id="1817616" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="SPAC">SPAC</keyword> IPO is under threat from billionaire Bill Ackman, who <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/bill-ackman-boosts-blank-check-spac-ipo-target-billions-acquisition-2020-7-1029392640">hopes to raise $4 billion</a> for his SPAC, Pershing Square Tontine Holdings, when it goes public this week.Ackman is a <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/bill-ackman-put-200-million-warren-buffett-berkshire-hathaway-coronavirus-2020-4-1029071562?utm_source=markets&amp;utm_medium=ingestgest">longtime admirer</a> of Buffett and counted Berkshire as one of his biggest holdings <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/warren-buffett-berkshire-hathaway-lose-bill-ackman-investor-sells-shares-2020-5-1029238891">until recently</a>.

Warren Buffett's dealmaker closed the biggest 'blank-check' takeover ever this month. Here's why he may owe the Berkshire Hathaway chief for the deal.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Guy Snodgrass is a former TOPGUN instructor and naval aviator who's written two books.</li><li>He said the movies do a great job capturing what it's like to fly sorties and train in jets.</li></ul>This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Guy Snodgrass, a former TOPGUN instructor and retired naval aviator who was also Communications Director and Chief Speechwriter for Secretary of Defense James Mattis. It's been edited for length and clarity.With the original "Top Gun" film from 1986 and 2022's "Maverick" sequel, Hollywood and the producers did a phenomenal job. They worked in collaboration with the United States Navy, and all the flight scenes you see in both movies are pretty darn realistic.When the pilots were ripping through canyons in "Maverick" to practice low-level flying and then popping up to release ordnance on target, all of those are things that we would train to do and would do in similar circumstances. Of course, everything else has quite a bit of Hollywood magic sprinkled on it. You don't typically have a lot of love interests going on at TOPGUN. You're not out on the beach playing football.There are also a lot of liberties taken with the scenes of fights breaking out, too, like people getting in each other's faces and yelling and screaming. There's just not a lot of room for that in today's military; it's a very professional environment. There are disagreements, but you work through it as professionals.As for which film is <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-navy-topgun-school-fines-people-for-top-gun-quotes-2020-9">better at capturing TOPGUN</a>, I suspect it would be a generational question. If you ask someone who was flying in the 1970s and 1980s, they might say the original is better because that was their time. Plus, the original has the F-14 Tomcat, and there's a lot of nostalgia for that jet.The second movie was great with the flight scenes, the camaraderie, and how they approached the mission. There's still that Hollywood magic, like Capt. Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, who has been around for decades, being able to fly an F-14 against a Russian fifth-generation fighter and prevail. On that level, a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-china-us-militaries-fifth-gen-fighter-jets-problems-2023-12">fifth-generation fighter</a> like <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/fifth-generation-jets-made-ukraine-war-russia-su-57-missing-2023-10">Russia's Su-57</a> is going to smoke the F-14 every single day and twice on Sunday.But the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-outgunned-us-pilot-beat-top-soviet-jets-in-dogfight-2023-1">person in the cockpit is the key element</a>, and that's what we really focus on at TOPGUN.<h2>Becoming a TOPGUN instructor</h2><div type="image" title="Guy Snodgrass flying" height="1200" width="1920" msid="108564362" hostid="261" sizebytes="123206"></div>I think in a lot of cases throughout my career, I was always attracted to trying to do the toughest things. And one of the pathways I could take after my time as a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/pilot-navy-topgun-what-its-like-daily-life-2023-9">Navy fighter pilot</a> was to go through TOPGUN.That's the path I wanted to pursue, so I could try and reach that pinnacle of fighter pilots in naval aviation.But the most demanding part of being a TOPGUN instructor for me wasn't the actual flying, like you see in "Top Gun" and "Top Gun: Maverick," but the lecture process as an instructor.Getting into TOPGUN is fairly straightforward. You've accumulated a body of work over your time in a flight squadron. You put in your application, you get letters of recommendations from pilots you've actively flown with, and typically your commanding officer from your unit will provide an independent evaluation.When I was an instructor, I saw the other side of this. Once you have all the applications, maybe 30 people for eight spots, there's this cascade — we call it the waterfall — in how people get chosen. You go through all 30 individuals and determine who are the few, usually maybe four or five, that we want to stay as instructors. The remainder of the pool can now be picked by other schools, so it kind of cascades down from TOPGUN.In my case, I was selected to be an instructor. I went through the course, which today takes about 12 weeks, and at the conclusion of that, I was selected.<h2>A day in the life at TOPGUN</h2><div type="image" title="Guy Snodgrass pic" height="3240" width="4320" msid="108564364" hostid="261" sizebytes="704296"></div>You're typically an instructor at TOPGUN for two-and-a-half, maybe three years. You're flying every single day, Monday through Friday, and in many cases, twice a day. We'd get up early, around 4:30am, for our first brief at base around 5:30am to 6:00am. You have some time to relax, grab your gear, get into the cockpit, and then there's a 30-minute period to get the jet started and get all the systems online and ready for take off.Depending on how dynamic your mission is — meaning how aggressive and fast you're flying — you'll likely be airborne for about an hour, doing basic <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/former-topgun-instructor-reveals-most-terrifying-moment-as-fighter-pilot-2020-9">flight maneuvers</a> and the dogfighting you see in the "Top Gun" movies. A longer flying mission might be about an hour and a half.You might be dogfighting against an instructor or using the gun on the plane to strafe the target on the ground or drop bombs from high or low altitude, putting what you learn in the classroom towards practical application. Then you're becoming an expert in air-to-ground delivery and doing multiplane exercises, flying with one other plane to start and then you extend outwards with three other planes for pretty involved missions, dodging simulated surface-to-air missiles, fighting your way in and dropping weapons, then fighting your way out.Back on the ground, you get out of your gear, get some downtime, and then start the debrief. The debriefs are epic because they typically last anywhere from three-and-a-half to five hours.These sessions can go for a very long time because you're learning lessons from what you just flew. We would always say that the debrief is the most important because that's where you're learning your lessons and able to call them out in a real, tangible way so that you can apply them moving forward.After debrief, you'll probably have an hour break and then do another flight and repeat the cycle. You typically head home around 10:00 pm, maybe 10:30 pm.<h2>What they don't show in the movies</h2><div type="image" title="Guy Snodgrass pic" height="742" width="1311" msid="108564365" hostid="261" sizebytes="49570"></div>As an instructor, you go through the entirety of the process, and after everyone else finishes training and graduates, you stay and become a subject matter expert for some element of teachings at TOPGUN. Mine was air-to-air mission planning, so being in charge of long-range aerial combat.Then you have six months to prepare, study, and practice to give this lecture on your area. You get eight practice lessons to receive feedback. In my case, it was a four-and-a-half hour long lecture, hundreds of presentation slides, and it had to be completely from memory. They don't let you look at your slides, and you can't use notes.That's the biggest thing, the most demanding part for me wasn't the actual flying, but the lecture process and being able to do it completely from memory. But once I passed that, I was a fully qualified instructor and continued to learn and instruct throughout the remainder of my time.<div type="image" title="Guy Snodgrass pic" height="2592" width="3888" msid="108564367" hostid="261" sizebytes="246634"></div>The most rewarding part of being a TOPGUN instructor was the personal relationships you form with the people around you, who are also dedicated to trying to achieve their best potential. There's a competitive air because everyone wants to try to be the best, but mostly there's camaraderie.I also got to meet these students as they came through, interacting with the future of naval aviation, future leaders who are going to continue to grow for the remainder of their career and assume positions of greater authority. As an instructor, you're having a real direct influence and ability there.

I taught at TOPGUN, and the flying and dogfighting seen in the 'Top Gun' movies are pretty darn realistic

<ul class="summary-list"><li>As AI capabilities increase, some travelers are using it to help them plan their trips.</li><li>Not all AI software is alike — and some give people incorrect or misleading travel information.</li></ul><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-jobs-at-risk-replacement-artificial-intelligence-ai-labor-trends-2023-02">AI is part of the newest wave of technology sweeping across the world,</a> and the next area it's making strides in is helping people travel easier — if you use it in the right areas.While AI might seem like the answer to all your travel troubles, travel experts caution against trusting software to plan your entire trip. Doing so might lead to itineraries that are too full or don't make sense for your family, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-travel-itenerary-vacation-costa-rica-errors-logistics-advisors-2023-3">Insider previously reported</a>.Despite these problems, the best place to use AI might be one of the most complex parts of travel to plan — the dreaded international flight.Some AI bots, like ChatGPT, do not have the ability to search in real-time or browse the internet, which prevents them from booking or finding flights.Another AI-powered app, though, which works through WhatsApp messages, proved incredibly useful in the search. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/family-letting-ai-chatbot-plan-trip-around-the-world-2023-5">GuideGeek</a>, which has garnered attention from travel influencers for its capabilities, measured up decently to other travel sites.Though the guide does not book flights for you, it does allow you to search flights and offers tools like itinerary planning, which includes suggestions based on your budget, the number of people coming with you, and when you are going. It also can provide sightseeing suggestions, down to which restaurants you should try.In testing GuideGeek, we asked the AI assistant to help us plan a flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali, Indonesia, from June 15, 2024, to June 29, 2024.GuideGeek said its pick for cheapest and "best" roundtrip cost was $1,159.34, with a cumulative travel time of 44 hours and 50 minutes.Using Google Flights, the exact same search yielded a lowest-round trip cost of $1,389 and a cumulative travel time of 51 hours and 55 minutes, and a best-round trip cost of $1,414 with a total travel time of 44 hours and 50 minutes.On Expedia, the same flight cost a similar $1,395 roundtrip but had a lengthy travel time of over 70 cumulative hours.GuideGeek also performed well on another international search for a flight from San Francisco International Airport to London Heathrow Airport, giving slightly cheaper flights than Google Flights and Expedia, but providing faster travel times.But let's say you wanted to take a trickier trip — perhaps one from Syracuse, New York, to Syracuse, Italy. How does GuideGeek perform in a search like that?For a 2024 spring break trip from Syracuse to Syracuse, GuideGeek took a long time to develop options. Its "best" rated round trip flight cost $1,510, and its cheapest suggestion cost $1,296.58. Here, it found itself fairly matched by, if not slightly behind, its competitors. On Expedia, the cheapest flight round trip was $1,172; on Google Flights, the cheapest flight was $1,268.For a truly tough flight plan, we tested the services' ability to find flights from Hays Regional Airport in Kansas to Barra Airport in Scotland. Hays Regional uses only one airline, United Express, United Airlines's local branch, while Barra Airport has a beach runway and is only open during limited hours.Neither Expedia nor GuideGeek could find any flights from Hays to Barra for a Christmas trip from December 17, 2023, to December 30, 2023 — leaving Google Flights as the sole site able to plan the nearly $7,000 multi-plane round trip.Another consideration to remember is that cheap international travel often has a hidden cost: a hellishly uncomfortable experience. The "best" suggestions on all tried tools did take into account travel time, but looking for the cheapest routes did not. Additionally, GuideGeek and the other planning sites don't provide details on extra costs, like baggage or how much it will be to upgrade a seat.GuideGeek isn't a miracle tool, but it is helpful for planning flights between major international locations. For more complex flights, though, it might be best to stick with manual searching.

AI can help plan out your next international flight, but it's not perfect

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Short-seller <keyword id="1458924" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Carson-Block">Carson Block</keyword> is placing more bets against <keyword id="4675570" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="SPACs">SPACS</keyword>, according to a Bloomberg report.</li><li>Block, in an interview with Bloomberg, called the <keyword id="1817616" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="SPAC">SPAC</keyword> market a "<keyword id="41357" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Scam">scam</keyword>" and said some retail investors will fall victim to them. </li><li>Block has wagered against some companies that have gone public via SPACs. </li></ul>Famed short-seller Carson Block is crafting more bets against more special purpose acquisition companies, according to a report, and warning that some retail investors will fall victim to the SPAC market that he describes as a "scam.""There are just so many that are dodgy," said Block, the CEO of investment research firm Muddy Waters Capital, in an <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-05/carson-block-steps-up-spac-attacks-citing-predatory-behavior?sref=GUP2BhaG">interview with Bloomberg on Monday.</a>"The market is a scam -- and it's here to stay," he said in a telephone interview with Bloomberg. He declined to identify his latest targets, the report said. It also quoted Block as saying that some retail investors will become victims of "predatory plays."<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-a-spac">SPACs </a>take companies public by acquiring or merging with them and are considered as a faster and less expensive alternative to a traditional IPO.Bloomberg noted that Block has recently bet against <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/stocks/xl-stock">XL Fleet Corp</a>., a company that transforms existing commercial vehicles like small trucks into electric vehicles. <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/xl-fleet-stock-price-spac-electric-vehicle-public-trading-ford-2020-12-1029917599">XL Fleet went public late last year</a> through blank-check company Pivotal Investment Corporation II and its shares have dropped by nearly 70% since the start of 2021.He's also wagered against <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/stocks/mpln-stock">MultiPlan Corp</a>., a <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/warren-buffett-dealmaker-struck-11-billion-blank-check-multiplan-takeover-2020-7-1029413701?utm_source=markets&amp;utm_medium=ingestgest">healthcare group that went public</a> through Churchill Capital III that is down about 25% this year, the report said. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/carson-block-tesla-spac-muddy-waters-2021-3">Block told Insider last month the SPAC boom</a> has given unscrupulous sponsors the opportunity to take advantage of investors, particularly in the electric-vehicle industry."One of the most effective ways of preying on unsophisticated retail [investors] seems to be doing SPACs in the EV space," Block said. The Securities and Exchange Commission <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/spac-sec-looking-wall-street-blank-check-craze-information-2021-3-1030245260">said last month it's "taking a hard look"</a> at the recent surge in SPACs and warned investors of the risks involved with celebrity-backed blank-check companies.

'The market is a scam': Famed short seller Carson Block says he's ramping up bets against 'predatory' SPACs

<ul><li><keyword id="1150206" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Bill-Ackman">Bill Ackman</keyword>'s blank-check buyout company is set to stop taking investor orders and begin trading on Wednesday.</li><li>The <keyword id="6767232" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="special-purpose-acquisition-company">special purpose acquisition company</keyword> is set to break records for IPOs in its category, with plans to offer 200 million units at $20 each. The $4 billion fundraising goal <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/bill-ackman-boosts-blank-check-spac-ipo-target-billions-acquisition-2020-7-1029392640">was raised from $3 billion</a> just last week.</li><li>Each unit consists of one common share and one-ninth of a redeemable warrant. Full warrants allow holders to buy an additional share for $23.</li><li>Though <keyword id="3457215" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="ackman">Ackman</keyword> hasn't revealed which companies he's eyeing to take over, previous regulatory filings said he's looking for "high-quality, venture-backed businesses" and "mature unicorns."</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?utm_source=markets&amp;utm_medium=ingest?utm_source=markets&amp;utm_medium=ingestutm_source=msn.com&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=msn-slideshow&amp;utm_campaign=bodyurlutm_campaign=bodyurl">Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul>Bill Ackman's special purpose acquisition company — <keyword id="9575100" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="pershing-square-tontine">Pershing Square Tontine</keyword> Holdings — will stop taking investor orders on Tuesday and begin trading on Wednesday, according to recent <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1811882/000119312520195140/0001193125-20-195140-index.htm">regulatory filings</a>.The blank-check acquisition vehicle is set to break records with its initial public offering. The <keyword id="1817616" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="SPAC">SPAC</keyword> plans to sell 200 million units at $20 each, raking in up to $4 billion for a future buyout. The sum <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/bill-ackman-boosts-blank-check-spac-ipo-target-billions-acquisition-2020-7-1029392640">is up from initial plans</a> to sell 150 million units at the same price. Ackman also committed to pushing up to $3 billion into the SPAC from his own funds, potentially growing the company's size to $7 billion.Each unit consists of one common share and one-ninth of a redeemable warrant. Each full warrant allows a holder to buy one share of common stock for $23, according to the filing.The SPAC will trade on the New York Stock Exchange and is expected to trade with the ticker "PSTH."Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/stock-market-investing-strategy-cheap-options-trades-for-earnings-kolanovic-2020-7" target="_blank" rel="noopener">JPMORGAN: The most unloved group of stocks at the coronavirus crisis peak is now more appealing than ever before. Here are 3 trades to buy into while they're still super-cheap.</a>The hedge fund billionaire hasn't yet specified to investors which companies he's eyeing to take over. A previous filing stated Ackman is attracted to "high-quality, venture-backed businesses" that could be classified as "mature unicorns."Though Ackman primarily operates in the hedge fund industry, Pershing Square Tontine isn't his first foray into the SPAC sector. His fund — <keyword id="4289995" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="pershing-square-capital">Pershing Square Capital</keyword> — helped acquisition company Justice Holdings raise $1.4 billion in 2011. The SPAC merged with Burger King Worldwide the following year and later took the restaurant chain public.Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-invest-in-election-volatility-options-trades-goldman-sachs-2020-7">GOLDMAN SACHS: These 17 trades can help investors maximize their gains from the stocks most affected by the US elections in November</a>SPAC activity has been on a tear in 2020. The year has already seen 45 such firms go public and collectively raise more than $14 billion, according to <a href="https://spacinsider.com/stats/">SPACInsider</a>, a website tracking data on the offerings. The investment vehicles raise capital in public <keyword id="31671" type="CITY" weightage="100" keywordseo="markets">markets</keyword> with the intention of eventually buying a company and taking it public.Most recently, former Citigroup banker Michael Klein closed <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/warren-buffett-dealmaker-struck-11-billion-blank-check-multiplan-takeover-2020-7-1029413701">the biggest SPAC takeover yet</a> by acquiring healthcare group MultiPlan for $11 billion on July 13. The SPAC used in the deal — Churchill Capital III — is one of four acquisition companies led by Klein.Now read more markets coverage from Markets Insider and Business Insider:<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/investing-strategy-tech-stock-trades-for-q2-earnings-morgan-stanley-2020-7">Morgan Stanley warns tech stocks are unusually vulnerable to earnings disasters over the next few weeks — and shares its strategy for profiting regardless of the outcomes</a><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-stimulus-bill-not-passing-july-endanger-unemployment-benefits-mccarthy-2020-7">Top House Republican says 2nd round of coronavirus stimulus likely won't pass until August — endangering a key expansion to unemployment benefits</a><a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/oil-price-highest-march-eu-stimulus-coronavirus-economic-hopes-wti-2020-7-1029414952">Oil soars to highest since March as investors boost optimism for economic recovery</a>

Bill Ackman's blank-check acquisition company to begin trading on Wednesday after raising up to $4 billion

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>Private-equity firm Hellman &amp; Friedman is in talks to buy health insurance agency MultiPlan from Starr Investment Holdings for $7.5 billion, <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/private-equity-firm-near-deal-to-buy-multiplan-1462311730#:ehB4blhZ16eBLA">according to Liz Hoffman and Dana Cimillluca over at The Wall Street Journal.</a>The deal would mark a fast and profitable exit for Starr, which bought MultiPlan for $4.4 billion in 2014.Starr is run by Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, who set the firm up after exiting AIG, where he was CEO, in 2005.Starr was AIG's biggest shareholder when the insurance giant was bailed out during the financial crisis. Greenberg famously tried to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/r-ex-aig-ceo-greenberg-says-will-appeal-bailout-ruling-2015-6">take the government to court</a> for bailout, seeking up to $50 billion in damages. The MultiPlan deal, which could still fall apart according the WSJ, would break the silence in the private equity space, where firms are sitting on <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/private-equity-firms-are-closer-to-spending-their-piles-of-cash-2016-5">mountains of cash</a> but having a hard time finding bargains. Private equity firms paid out $2 billion in fees to the investment banks advising them on deals in the first quarter, down 38% from 2015, and the lowest since the first three months of 2010. "Low interest rates creates higher prices and higher prices are the enemy of wonderful returns," Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman <a href="http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000514661">told CNBC on Tuesday.</a>"So it makes it more difficult to set deals up. So you have to be very careful, do something clever and make enormous amount of value that historically investors are used to."For the full story, <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/private-equity-firm-near-deal-to-buy-multiplan-1462311730#:ehB4blhZ16eBLA ">head over</a> to The Wall Street Journal. <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/real-housewife-bethenny-frankels-business-mistake-2016-5">How one simple mistake cost 'Real Housewives' superstar Bethenny Frankel millions</a></h3> <div> <div> <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="treGpzdDrlNasuxsLTPw1AeeqbEP3zlz" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div> </div> </div> </div>

The former CEO of AIG is set to make an absolute killing on a multi-billion dollar deal

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Animated films can be 2D or <a href="https://www.insider.com/category/3d">3D</a>, but oftentimes they're actually a bit of both.</li><li>Animators use "2.5D" <keyword id="21778" type="TECHNOLOGY" weightage="60" keywordseo="animation">animation</keyword> techniques to make flat images appear 3D and even mix 2D and 3D elements within the same film.</li><li>There has been a lot of innovation in the 2.5D space with <a href="https://www.insider.com/category/movies">movies</a> like Sony's "<a href="https://www.insider.com/category/spider-man">Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse</a>," Disney's "Paperman," Netflix's "Klaus," and the Golden Globe-nominated <keyword id="163880" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Apple-TV">Apple TV</keyword> film "<keyword id="10730367" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="wolfwalkers">Wolfwalkers</keyword>."</li><li>"Wolfwalkers" used 3D models and virtual reality to help create immersive, hand-drawn images that let the viewer see through the eyes of a wolf.</li><li>We spoke with Cartoon Saloon's Eimhin McNamara, who was tasked with helping create these scenes, to find out how they did it and why they chose to lean into hand-drawn animation over 3D CGI.</li></ul>Following is the transcript of the <keyword id="21654" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="video">video</keyword>.Narrator: This is 2D hand-drawn animation.[horns toot]And this is 3D computer-generated animation.But many films actually fall somewhere in between -- or what's often referred to as "2.5D."This is when a variety of techniques are used to make an otherwise flat 2D film feel 3D, with depth, but also with a unique hand-drawn style. Animators might use illustration tricks like shading, layering, forced perspective, and parallax on 2D objects to make them appear as if they existed in a 3D space.Some films even mix dimensions by adding 3D characters and background objects to 2D films.Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" was primarily in 2D, but the chandelier? A 3D CGI add-on. And animators created this jungle entirely in 3D, so a 2D hand-drawn Tarzan could swing through. "Lion King" was the same. This wildebeest stampede was digitally simulated in 3D, but Simba was in 2D.[Simba gasps]And animators are continuing to push 2.5D further, because there are still some things that computers can't fully replace, like the graphic look of comics in "Into the Spider-Verse," which incorporated 2D line work on 3D models.The latest example of 2.5D innovation is Cartoon Saloon's 2020 film, "Wolfwalkers," which, like "Tarzan," created a 3D forest -- only this 3D forest would never actually appear in the final film. A team of nine animators would ultimately recreate every single digital frame of these scenes by hand on thousands of sheets of paper.Eimhin McNamara: The idea was that it would not feel too clinical, too clean, too, like, artificial.Narrator: That's Eimhin McNamara, whom directors Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart tasked with creating the "wolfvision" scenes for the film. In these scenes, the viewer sees everything through the eyes of the main character, Robyn, as she transforms into a wolf.Eimhin: The main thing with the wolfvision that Tomm and Ross wanted to get on screen was they wanted to make it feel like a heightened perspective or a heightened experience, a heightened-reality version of the film.Narrator: The animation team could've made a fully 3D film relying on digital technology, but they opted for 2D hand-drawn animation instead, specifically with graphite, to mimic art from the 1600s. But they decided to use 3D tools to first plan out the scenes. Using these tools and virtual reality in the previsualization stage helped create more realistic backdrops and mimic the natural movement of the wolf.There were two main settings in the film, the town and the forest, both with their own wolfvision scenes and art styles. The town, with its woodblock print, was easily made with more traditional 2.5D techniques. Animators worked in After Effects to place elements at various distances from the camera, creating an illusion of depth.This built on a technique that goes back to 1942, when Disney shot the opening scene of "Bambi" using a multiplane camera, which has layers of painted glass to achieve a similar parallax effect. But the forest previs scenes required a lot more innovation and a lot more work to get right.They were inspired by the look and feel of the Studio Ghibli film "The Tale of Princess Kaguya," so these scenes required a more organic stroke with a flowy watercolor style, a creative choice you couldn't really get with CGI.Eimhin started out with a simple hand-drawn sketch of the woods and a telescoping effect. He used depth maps and Photoshop to help create this illusion and sketch out the frames by hand one by one. But he quickly realized they would need a more dynamic camera, because the wolf wouldn't just be walking forward, it would also be jumping, looking around, and even bobbing its head as it panted and breathed.Eimhin: It helps you feel like you're actually in, you know, the head of the character.Narrator: So the team experimented with virtual reality using the headset Oculus Rift. They drew and built a 3D forest in VR with a sculpting program called Medium.This virtual set was then transferred to a computer-animation tool Blender, where artists painted on more stylistic 2D elements. Animators used these rough overlays to adjust and refine the 3D model.Eimhin: You would basically draw on top of the 3D models. Bake in some line work onto the forms. Would still give it kind of a nice kind of squiggly and kind of hand-drawn feel.Narrator: Other 2D elements included soldiers and rough flames for the forest-fire scene. That way, animators wouldn't have to guess locations for those assets later on. This 3D model was used to block out the path and speed of the camera movements.Eimhin: And we would then start moving the camera through it, bring it to the directors, go, "OK, well, how's the movement here? Is it looking good?" They might go, "Actually, we should probably go a bit slower with this so it has a bit more, like, oomph." Or, "We should go faster." Whatever the case may be.Narrator: Now, Disney used a similar method back in 1999, when animators created a 3D forest for a 2D Tarzan to swing through using a program called Deep Canvas. But they ultimately kept the 3D model and used digital paint in the final film.For "Wolfwalkers," the audience never actually sees this 3D model or all the intricate design work involved in creating it. The final images were all eventually covered in handmade graphite drawings.Eimhin: It's not just about concealing 3D, it's more about, like, how can we build on it and make it so it is primarily 2D?Narrator: Eimhin printed out each frame of his 3D sequence on paper using red ink as a guide. Then a team of nine animators drew directly over each of these red images by hand with charcoal and pencil. The bright red could easily be removed later from the blacks and grays in the digital-clean-up stage.Drawing each frame by hand is a time-consuming process, so to help manage the workload, they decided to halve the number of images by playing with the frame rate. Normally, you'd see 24 different images every second, but here they drop down to 12. That way they only had to draw 12 images for every second of the scene.But changing the frame rate can also make the scene appear choppy.Eimhin: So, we kind of compensated for that by smudging things and actually using the organic qualities, so it is just more like a drawing than it is like a camera movement.Narrator: Smudging was also used to create motion blur, like in this kitchen scene with the checkered floor. And the hand-drawn style allowed them to get creative with certain elements, like the smoke of the fire.Eimhin: So, the graphite would bleed out. It would go to the white of the page towards where the fire was, so you would get a nice kind of flickery feeling of the fire, like almost burning up the charcoal or such on the paper.Narrator: Once all of the drawings were complete, they scanned the approximate 6,000 hand-drawn images, digitally removed the red lines, and touched up the line work. They also added additional layers in the composite stage.As you can see here in this town scene, the various tones and textures and the colored wolf scent are all drawn separately. These multiple layers meant much more paper.For example, this scene, when Robyn wakes up as a wolf for the first time, required about 1,500 printed pages. The result of all this hard work was an innovative 2.5D style that highlights the artists' skills in drawing by hand -- something a computer alone wouldn't be able to do.Eimhin: It's, again, just about getting an organic thing on screen that looks like people made it versus, you know, computer hit render.

How 'Wolfwalkers' used 3D technology to transform 2.5D animation

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image">Reuters</div></div></div>Finance Insider is Business Insider's midday summary of the top stories of the past 24 hours.To sign up, scroll to the bottom of this page and click "Get updates in your inbox," or <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/newsletter/prime-finance?IR=T&amp;utm_source=businessinsider&amp;utm_medium=finance_insider&amp;utm_term=finance_insider_leadgen_text_link&amp;utm_content=leadgen_text_link&amp;utm_campaign=finance_insider_leadgen_link">click here.</a>Hedge fund managers have the stage right now at the Ira Sohn Conference.Carson Block of Muddy Waters Research <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/carson-block-sohn-short-2016-5">just announced he is short Bank of Ozarks</a>, sending the stock plummeting. Billionaire hedge fund manager Jim Chanos revealed that he is still short Valeant, and that <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jim-chanos-is-still-short-valeant-2016-5">he is also short Tesla and SolarCity.</a> He was asked about Tesla after it was reported that <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/2-execs-leaving-tesla-2016-5">two of the company's top executives are leaving</a>. Larry Robbins, CEO of Glenview Capital Management, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/robbins-hedge-funds-are-playing-dodgeball-2016-5">said hedge funds are playing dodgeball</a>, and hedge fund manager Chamath Palihapitiya said<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/a-hedge-fund-manager-thinks-amazon-could-be-worth-3-trillion-2016-5"> Amazon could be worth $3 trillion</a>. Check back here for our <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/clusterstock">continued coverage from the event.</a>Elsewhere in investing, there is a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jpmorgan-on-fund-manager-underperformance-2016-5">new theory for why fund managers have been getting walloped</a>, and here is a list of the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jpmorgan-list-of-stocks-owned-by-hedge-funds-2016-5">24 stocks hedge funds love. </a>Credit Suisse has cut around 130 jobs in its global markets business in London, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/credit-suisse-cutting-trading-jobs-2016-5">according to people familiar with the matter.</a> Of the 130, about 80 are in fixed income, with the other 50 in equities, the people said.Lastly, Americans are saving more - <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/us-savings-rate-problem-2016-5">and it's killing the economy</a>.Here are the top Wall Street headlines at midday:<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gross-investment-outlook-may-2016-2016-5">Soon we'll give people money to do nothing, whether Bill Gross likes it or not</a> - Bill Gross thinks we have two choices: give money away or leave everyone screwed.<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/big-pharma-bids-for-medivation-2016-5">Here's why major drugmakers are going after a relatively unknown biotech</a> - There's a new bidding war brewing in the drug industry.<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/r-us-exchange-ice-shelves-plans-for-london-bourse-counter-bid-2016-5">US exchange ICE shelves plans for London bourse counter bid</a> - The New York Stock Exchange's owner shelved plans on Wednesday to gatecrash a merger between London Stock Exchange Group and its German counterpart.<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-china-debt-in-charts-2016-5">Goldman Sachs nails the staggering size of China's debt in 3 simple charts</a> - Want to know why everyone is obsessed with China's massive debt buildup?<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/dangers-lurking-in-the-world-economy-2016-5">These 4 things could rattle the global economy</a> - After the darkness at the start to 2016, the world economy actually looks pretty good right now.<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/aeropostale-is-still-losing-favor-with-teens-2016-5">One of the hottest teen brands from a decade ago just filed for bankruptcy</a> - Aeropostale used to be one of the most popular teen retailers.<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-former-aig-ceo-is-set-to-make-an-absolute-killing-on-a-multi-billion-dollar-deal-2016-5">The former CEO of AIG is set to make a killing on a multibillion-dollar deal</a> - Private-equity firm Hellman &amp; Friedman is in talks to buy health-insurance agency MultiPlan from Starr Investment Holdings.<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/expensive-restaurants-that-are-worth-the-price-2016-5">17 ultra-expensive restaurants that are actually worth the price</a> - At high-end restaurants, it's easy to end up shelling out hundreds of dollars per person on lavish tasting menus and meticulous wine pairings

Jim Chanos, Carson Block and Credit Suisse

Welcome to Digital Health Briefing, the newsletter providing the latest news, data, and insight on how digital technology is disrupting the healthcare ecosystem, produced by Business Insider Intelligence.<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/intelligence/digital-health-briefing?IR=T">Sign up and receive Digital Health Briefing free to your inbox.</a>Have feedback? We'd like to hear from you. Write me at: <a href="mailto:lbeaver@businessinsider.com">lbeaver@businessinsider.com</a>WALMART IN TALKS TO ACQUIRE HUMANA TO FORTIFY MARKET POSITION: Walmart is reportedly in preliminary acquisition talks with health insurance company Humana, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/walmart-in-early-stage-acquisition-talks-with-humana-1522365618">according</a> to The Wall Street Journal. The two companies already have a relationship, having co-branded a Medicare drug plan and worked together on a healthy food rewards program. An official deal to buy Humana would turn Walmart into a formidable health system, controlling the pharmacy, health insurance, and pharmacy benefit managers (PBM). PBMs are the middlemen of the pharmaceutical industry, responsible for negotiating the costs of drugs for health plans.Joining forces with Humana would help turn Walmart into a one-stop shop for their customers' healthcare services. Humana is the second-biggest provider of private Medicare plans, known as Medicare Advantage, according to WSJ. These plans are expected to grow as more baby boomers become eligible. Walmart is targeting this age group by adding more primary-care clinics, which some locations already have. This is particularly valuable to elderly consumers on Medicare and Medicaid benefits that are less willing or able to travel. That's because they can run multiple errands at the same location. For example, they can also pick up their prescriptions and shop for groceries and households items. This is just the latest instance of healthcare companies participating in vertical integration to fortify their market positions. As healthcare costs continue to balloon, margins are being compressed, leading healthcare organizations to look for new ways to generate revenue. Expanding their offerings is one way to achieve this. For example, in December 2017, CVS inked a deal to acquire Aetna. And in March 2018 Cigna set in motion plans to buy Express Scripts, the largest PBM in the US. The recent acquisition activity may serve as a bolster against Amazon's myriad moves into the healthcare industry. The online retailer appears to be building out a full healthcare ecosystem. In the past year alone the firm has introduced HIPAA-compliant cloud features, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/digital-health-briefing-amazon-to-enter-major-healthcare-partnership-apple-watch-aids-in-treating-depression-ibm-watson-shows-its-power-in-cancer-study-2017-11">entered</a> into a cloud partnership with health tech giant Cerner, <a href="http://www.alexadiabeteschallenge.com/">launched</a> a challenge to third-party companies to develop Alexa skills to help people with diabetes manage their condition, and in January <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/digital-health-briefing-amazon-berkshire-jpmorgan-to-launch-healthcare-company-mobile-tech-is-transforming-hospitals-omada-health-launches-new-trial-2018-1">announced</a> the creation of a healthcare company with JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway. If Amazon continues on this trajectory it could become a dominant one-stop shop for providers and patients. Enjoy reading this briefing? <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/intelligence/digital-health-briefing?IR=T" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sign up and receive Digital Health Briefing to your inbox.</a>13 COUNTRIES SIGN UP TO GLOBAL DIGITAL HEALTH PARTNERSHIP: As the digitization of healthcare gains steam globally, the need for integrative and shared policies between not only national but international health systems grows in kind. Thirteen countries, led by Australia and including Sweden, Saudi Arabia, the US, and the UK, have <a href="https://www.digitalhealth.gov.au/news-and-events/news/media-release-new-global-digital-health-partnership/Global%20Digital%20Health%20Partnership%20Summit%20Communique%20-%20February%202018%20-%20FINAL.pdf">formed</a> the Global Digital Health Partnership (GDHP). The aim of the partnership is to share policy and research on digital health services in order to come up with best practices. The group will have the advantage of shaping how the overall industry evolves. Over the course of 2018, the GDHP plans to collaborate around concepts such as the interoperability of healthcare, cybersecurity, digital health outcomes policies, clinician and consumer engagement, and evidence and evaluation of digital health. The complete list of countries in the group is Austria, Australia, Canada, India, Indonesia, Italy, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, the US, and the UK.OPTUM, UNITEDHEALTHCARE, HUMANA, OTHERS PARTNER TO LAUNCH BLOCKCHAIN EFFORT: A group of leading healthcare organizations are joining forces to launch a pilot program to test how blockchain technology can improve data quality and reduce admin costs associated with retrieving electronic health records (EHR). The five healthcare organizations include Humana, MultiPlan, Quest Diagnostics, and UnitedHealth Group's Optum and UnitedHealthcare. The group hopes the technology will make it easier to access healthcare data in a timely fashion, while also cutting down on the need to "reconcile" differences in EHR systems. Industry <a href="../Downloads/health-plan-week-january-2017.pdf">estimates</a> indicate that $2.1 billion is spent annually by healthcare systems on finding and maintaining provider data. Distributed ledger technology could also help to increase transparency around who has access to a patient's data and how they're using it, which would help to improve data security.150 MILLION FITNESS AND NUTRITION APP ACCOUNTS HACKED: MyFitnessPal, Under Armour's nutrition-tracking fitness app, was hacked in February this year, affecting around 150 million users' accounts, Under Armour announced last week. The news highlights the damage that can be caused from a breach of a single app - the breach is the largest yet in 2018 and includes usernames, passwords, and email addresses. This information is valuable given that 80% of global smartphone users recycle the same password-email combination across multiple services, according to Keeper Security, potentially leading to further user data vulnerabilities down the line. At the same time, damaging reports like this one could negatively impact the broader mHealth app market. Adoption of mHealth apps has grown rapidly, up 330% between 2014 and 2017, <a href="http://flurrymobile.tumblr.com/post/165079311062/health-fitness-app-users-are-going-the-distance">according</a> to Flurry. If consumers become fearful of their data being access by nefarious players, it could mute the health app market's growth. Because of this, mHealth app publishers need to ensure that users are working to protect their information. This could be done by sending reminders to change passwords regularly or offering two-factor authentication, for example. <div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="Business Insider Intelligence" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5aa6b3c93be59f1b008b46a8-960/bii global mhealth solutions market value.png"></a>Business Insider Intelligence</div></div></div>IN OTHER NEWS<ul><li>US Secretary of Veteran Affairs (VA) David Shulkin's dismissal last week could impact the department's impending $16 billion electronic health records (EHR) deal with Cerner, POLITICO reports. Although specific details remain uncertain, the consensus among industry experts is that the deal will likely be delayed because of the shuffling, but will ultimately go ahead.</li></ul> <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/intelligence/bitcoin-101?IR=T&amp;utm_source=businessinsider&amp;utm_medium=ctgr&amp;utm_term=ctgr_leadgen&amp;utm_content=fintech_ctgr_leadgen&amp;utm_campaign=fintech_ctgr_leadgen_bitcoin-101"></a>

DIGITAL HEALTH BRIEFING: Walmart, Humana in acquisition talks - 13 countries form digital health group - Leading healthcare firms launch blockchain pilot

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image">David McNew/ ReutersChairman and CEO of Apollo Global Management, LLC Leon Black (L), Founding partner of TPG Capital David Bonderman (2nd L) and Founder and CEO of Providence Equity Partners Jonathan Nelson take part in a panel discussion titled "New Directions in Private Equity" at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills</div></div></div>The good times are rolling again.That is according to Josh Harris, the cofounder of private equity firm Apollo Global Management. "The financing markets are back. They're back in all their glory," Harris said on a first quarter earnings call on Thursday. The New York-based private equity firm's potential leveraged buyout deals evaporated when the high-yield market went in to a tailspin late last year. Investors were spooked by the possibility of wide-spread defaults, prompting a massive selloff. That made raising new financing for takeovers was almost impossible. Harris had said in January that the "financing markets are shutting down" and the firm's "entire private equity pipeline dried up," <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-29/apollo-lbo-pipeline-dried-up-as-lending-shut-down-harris-says">according to Bloomberg's Devin Banerjee</a>.That hurts private equity firms because they usually use debt to finance takeovers. Private equity activity dropped off sharply as a result. It also hurts Wall Street banks, which tend to get a big chunk of fees from private equity firms. The amount of fees PE firms paid to Wall Street banks dropped 38% in the first quarter this year to $2 billion, according to Dealogic. That's the lowest since 2010.But things have changed. High-yield bonds, also known as junk debt, have rebounded. Financing markets have reopened. Private equity <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-former-aig-ceo-is-set-to-make-an-absolute-killing-on-a-multi-billion-dollar-deal-2016-5">deals are happening again.</a> And that spells good news for Wall Street. Devin Ryan, an analyst at JMP Securities, asked Harris about the financing markets on the Q1 earnings call. Here's what he said (emphasis ours): Yes ... the financial markets are back. They're back in all their glory. Literally, again, things were relatively shut down for a few months and now we concluded a number of transactions based on having a rough expectation or an expectation of a relatively rough financing market and pricing that in. And then sometime having a little luck is good because the deals - we priced Fresh Market, we priced ADT.Obviously, we still have a pipeline of deals to go into the market, but all the deals are getting done ahead of our expectation when we did the deals. And so the financing markets, the high yield markets was down five and now it's up six. It was down five last year. It's been up six or so in the first four months. Apollo announced a $6.8 billion deal to buy electronic security systems provider ADT Corporation in February, and also recently announced a deal to buy grocery chain Fresh Market for about <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/fresh-market-acquired-for-136-billion-2016-3">$1.4 billion</a>. Elsewhere in private equity, Hellman &amp; Friedman this week <a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/multiplan-announces-agreement-to-be-acquired-by-hellman--friedman-300264042.html">has agreed a deal to buy</a> health-insurance agency MultiPlan from Starr Investment Holdings. Activity is picking up again.Now, the market can take a turn for the worst again just as quickly as it rebounded. Harris is focused on taking advantage of the more positive conditions while they last. He said (emphasis ours):So things are - the good times are rolling again at least for this month, but you can't really predict what will happen given the relatively muted financial fundamentals of the economy, but very aggressive monitory technical out there in the world.And there's sort of a battle between fundaments and technicals and one month fundaments wins and then another month technicals wins and you just have to be really on your toes to navigate what's a very challenging environment. <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/real-housewife-bethenny-frankels-business-mistake-2016-5">How one simple mistake cost 'Real Housewives' superstar Bethenny Frankel millions</a></h3> <div> <div> <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="treGpzdDrlNasuxsLTPw1AeeqbEP3zlz" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div> </div> </div> </div>

Wall Street's money machine is spluttering back to life

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Airing on prime time for 32 seasons and counting, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/the-simpsons-is-good-at-predicting-the-future-2016-11">"The Simpsons"</a> is arguably the most successful animated show of all time. </li><li>This episode of "Movies Insider" looks at how the "Simpsons" <keyword id="21778" type="TECHNOLOGY" weightage="60" keywordseo="animation">animation</keyword> has advanced over more than three decades, beginning with the "Tracey Ullman" shorts all the way up to the show's recent seasons. </li><li>We spoke to David Silverman and Al Jean, two of the main minds behind "<keyword id="6483447" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="the-simpsons">The Simpsons</keyword>" who have been with the show since its first season, to find out how <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/matt-groening-reveals-that-springfield-was-named-after-springfield-oregon-in-the-simpsons-2012-4">Springfield</a> evolved from <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/matt-groening-simpsons-apple-ad-2011-6">Matt Groening's</a> early sketches into the crisp, clean look of the show today.</li></ul>Following is a full transcript of the <keyword id="21654" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="video">video</keyword>.♪ The Simpsons ♪Narrator: This is the original title sequence to "The Simpsons." And this is what it looks like today.In the older version, Marge's hair really whips around. But with the revamp, the motion gets toned down. Even the paper bag moves less.Over the last 30-plus years, the "Simpsons" animation has gone through a lot of changes, with every decade bringing new technology that helped the show refine its style.We talked to two of the main minds behind "The Simpsons" who've been with the show since day one to find out how we got from this to this.Lisa: Noble spirits, your time has passed.[burps]Narrator: Here's what the Simpsons looked like when they first appeared on TV as a recurring segment on "The Tracey Ullman Show." If they don't look like the Simpsons you know today, that's because these characters were very much still a work in progress.Homer: There's nothing to worry about. Now everyone go to sleep.Narrator: Matt Groening, the creator of "The Simpsons," would sketch out the one-minute shorts, then hand his sketches to the show's three animators, who together made up the show's entire animation department. David Silverman was one of them.David: And we sort of would take Matt's rough drawings and cobble a storyboard between the three of us.Narrator: The three of them were involved in nearly every stage of the process after that, from layout, where they draw out the characters' key poses or acting, to the actual animation, to in-betweening, when they create the intermediate frames between key frames.To make things more demanding, "The Simpsons" was going for a hand-drawn look, so the artists used traditional ink-and-paint cel animation. Starting off with plastic sheets called cels, they would outline images on the front of the cel and paint color on the back.David estimated that in the early days, they were working 60- to 80-hour weeks to animate just a minute and a half between the three of them. Pressed for time, the animators actually just traced over Matt's drawings in the beginning. This might be why the Simpsons in the early shorts have sharper, more irregular lines, in the style that Matt was known for. They also started out with a more pronounced version of the potato-chip lip, another signature of Matt's straight out of his "Life in Hell" comics.From there, the artists designed and redesigned the characters as they went along. This led to some pretty notable inconsistencies, like the family's skin color varying between episodes or their proportions changing from one week to the next. There's even a 10-second sequence where Bart's character design shifts noticeably in three successive shots -- all within a single scene.But these quick decisions also laid the groundwork for the defining features of the "Simpsons" look. Matt said he gave the characters four fingers instead of five because it'd reduce "pencil mileage," making the figures easier to draw. And the team painted the Simpsons yellow for two reasons: the color would make them stand out on TV screens, and it would suit the characters who don't have hairlines. Like showrunner Mike Reiss said, the color yellow is "kinda skin, kinda hair."Now we get to "The Simpsons"' first season as its own TV show. This is the final episode of season one, but it was actually supposed to be the pilot, according to Al Jean, a "Simpsons" showrunner who's worked on the show since its very first season.Al: It really didn't look right. It didn't look like "The Simpsons," so it was actually the last show aired of the first 13.David: In the first season, there was a learning curve. We were basically training everybody else to draw the characters as we had conceived them.Narrator: First, the animators had to make the Simpsons' figures more rounded than they were in the shorts so that they'd be easier to turn around in space. And the designs that made the characters so iconic also made them difficult to draw consistently.Artists on the show have described the "Simpsons" character designs as "delicate" and "deceptively simple," because a single stray stroke could transform a character.Compare Bart to a character like Bugs Bunny. As David said, "Bugs Bunny has quite a lot of lines, which makes him easier to capture ... there's a greater allowance for mistakes." But with Bart's hair, for example, or his version of the Simpsons family nose, if there's a single line drawn wrong or with the wrong pencil thickness, the character will no longer look like Bart.So throughout season one, the show developed its model sheets -- style guides that lay out the right poses, movements, and expressions for each character. The season also varied a lot in how much fluidity is given to the characters' movements. Fluid animation is when a character's lines flow smoothly, like water.There are points in season one where the characters are very fluid, like Ms. Botz in this scene. See that head shake she does? It's almost like the animators drew her with more frames per second than they usually do, producing this super-smooth motion that stands out next to other scenes.Wacky moments like this are what many fans love most about the first season. But in season two, those wacky moments started to become more standardized.Homer: You're living in a world of make believe, with flowers and bells and leprechauns and magic frogs with funny little hats!Narrator: By then, the show had developed an almost 500-page style bible laying out exactly how and how not to draw the residents of Springfield. This page lays out various no-nos for drawing Lisa, while another page defines the eight-point rule for her hair, describing how it should be clustered in groups of three, three, and two on Lisa's head.Matt also wanted to distance "The Simpsons" from the house styles of other animation studios, which meant movement was key. In the Disney world, characters tend to move in a springy way, like they're dancing. And other characters, like Wile E. Coyote and Bugs Bunny, had bodies that extended and snapped back like rubber bands.The "Simpsons" team decided to have characters with a more limited range of movements, with occasional moments of fluidity for comedic or dramatic effect. They even studied Kermit the Frog, because they liked how he could convey emotion with just a slight change in his Muppet mouth.This style still left the Simpsons plenty of room for expressiveness. According to Nelson Shin at Akom, the South Korean studio that helps animate "The Simpsons," a typical <keyword id="44487" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="cartoon">cartoon</keyword> face maybe has six different mouths. A main character on "The Simpsons" can have as many as 27.The backgrounds were another challenge.Al: If you look at, like, Moe's in season one, it really does look like they're in a 2D environment. And it really looks a lot more 3D subsequently.David: The artwork was becoming better. Just getting perspective to the backgrounds, as opposed to them looking just sort of, like, badly drawn.[laughs]Narrator: The showrunners also leaned into other aspects of the "Simpsons" look: thin outlines and characters with few sharp edges on them and distinctively walled eyes. Those are crucial -- the big, bulgy, almost circular eyeballs with black-dot pupils that make the Simpsons look permanently stunned, like they just got electrocuted by their TV.The show made a rule that characters' eyes had to either be looking in the same direction or turning slightly outward from the nose, never cross-eyed like you see on Saturday morning cartoons, because that would look too "cute."Still, the show wasn't perfectly consistent on details like these. For a while, in seasons three through five, some characters' pupils were drawn bigger, something that David and Al say was unintentional.David: I want my characters to have more of a confused bird look, the sort of like ... It seemed the jokes played better. And then I think the blank expression, you as a viewer can just project whatever you feel about it. Narrator: "The Simpsons" stuck with hand-painted cel animation through the '90s, but by season seven, the showrunners were experimenting with digital paint in one-off episodes like this one, "Radioactive Man," and even digital animation in the season seven Halloween special.In 2002, the show used the same annual Halloween episode to try out digital paint again, this time for a sequence where Homer clones himself.David: Which actually would have probably been impossible on cels because there are so many clones and levels. There's a certain physical point of how many cel levels you can have, where, of course, digital compositing can have infinite number of levels and characters.Narrator: A few episodes later, the show switched over to digital coloring for good.Al: There was just a talk that you had, when they just said, "You're gonna have to go digital." There had been earlier shows where something wasn't the right color, maybe, but it was impossible to fix because of the cost, whereas with digital coloring, you can fix it faster for cheaper. And it's a whole new world, it really is.Narrator: It also gave the show more vivid backgrounds and crisper graphics and, at first, heavier black borders around characters and objects, an accident that the show fixed later on. We would have a problem where you had the camera move in and out, the line would get thinner and thicker, which we all hated.David: We were able to figure out that you could basically dial in the size of the lines and so forth. So as the seasons progressed, pretty quickly we just got into the more technical remedies for these situations.Narrator: And it's these experiments with digital that set the stage for "The Simpsons"' biggest transformation yet: "The Simpsons Movie."Trailer: The greatest Simpsons family adventure of all time!Narrator: For a while, the showrunners thought "The Simpsons Movie" would be fully CG-animated, but they didn't end up going the full-CG route for the film.Moe: "The Simpsons Movie" ...[splat]in 2D!Narrator: Instead, the team mixed traditional 2D animation with 3D CGI to make the show's classic style work in the most wide-screen movie format, CinemaScope.Since Springfield would appear on a 100-foot movie screen, the color-design team used a larger color palette for the movie than they'd ever used on the TV show. And while backgrounds on the show were often flat-colored and lit by a single source, the movie called for backgrounds that were richer in detail.To help focus the audience's eyes, the artists added shadow vignettes to the backgrounds and put a tone shadow and drop shadow on characters in every scene. On TV, they'd only given characters those shadows for scenes that were set at night or supposed to be especially dramatic. The more nuanced lighting and shadows in the movie created depth in every shot, so that certain characters and objects pop out at you.These artistic elevations stuck around long after the film. "The Simpsons" started incorporating more computer animation and 3D effects, especially for complicated backgrounds. The showrunners even created a special scene-planning team to digitally animate elaborate sequences.David: The scene planners helped in our camera moves and making them more sort of cinematic. We would try to emulate the idea of a multiplane camera, where you have planes of animation so that it feels like the camera's physically moving as opposed to just zooming in and out.Narrator: And working in widescreen HD animation for the movie proved to be a useful trial run for two years later, when the show, in its 20th season, officially moved to HD.Bart: Isn't it about time you went digital?Homer: Watch your mouth, you little smart-ass!Al: HD was a whole other enormous change that we had no money and no time to prepare for.Narrator: Higher digital resolution left less room for mistakes or shortcuts.Al: You really have to be much more careful that the backgrounds don't look shoddy in one spot and much better in another. There's so much information in the frame. Where we used to get by with, you know, you'd have a little piece of paper on a bulletin board and a scribble on it, it looks terrible now.Narrator: And in the first HD seasons, artists couldn't save time by recycling shots from past episodes like they normally do.Al: In season 20, it was really tricky. There was nothing that we could rely on from past shows to fill in. We had to restart our whole library of backgrounds, our whole library of old shots. So we've had to go redo things like the comic-book store or the town square, totally rethinking how they would look in HD.Narrator: And the HD format also took the show from its traditional 4:3 aspect ratio to 16:9. With this switch, Matt said the "Simpsons" team had to "rethink everything."David: So we became even more conscious of thinking about the space cinematically. We talked more about that. "OK, we're gonna have a flat-space shot here for this part of it. Now let's go to a deep-space shot." So, you could take more advantage of a longer shot. You could play more of the action in a wide shot.Narrator: The wider frame forced the team to think more about shot composition. This meant creating more asymmetry in shots.Al: Where you have a little piece of garbage here or a fire extinguisher on the wall there, or several things that just are like real life rather than just these perfect rectangles everywhere.Narrator: The show's iconic opening was also redone for the first time since season two. This HD makeover was somewhat controversial in the eyes of fans, who said characters like Marge looked too rigid in their movement. Al: The movements aren't quite as fluid, yeah. And what happened there was we said, well, we've gotta go to HD and we need a new main title, which is fairly lengthy, and they said, "You have no money."[laughs]We had to figure out ways to get it done without extra time, without extra money, and put in new things.Narrator: The artists were also still getting used to animating in HD.David: I think everybody just got used to using it more organically. So at the beginning it was a little stiffer, and we try to be conscious of that and try to make sure that the characters are moving more fluidly.Narrator: Even in recent seasons, characters seem to have bouncier movement, straying away from the stiffness of some early HD episodes. The show's still figuring out some other aspects of its look, too, like how much shadow to use.David: Sometimes we go overboard, and I think there's too much use of shadow. We sort of try to balance it out.Narrator: And how much color. David: We still follow our basic 200 colors, approximately, to paint things, but we vary the tones of them. We try to keep a sensibility that's connected to the original color palette. Narrator: Lately, the show's also revitalized some of its sets, including adding new jokes into the town square. And the artists have polished up old character models, especially when dusting off characters from earlier seasons, like Comic Book Guy, who they had to scale down from his season-two model, which means "The Simpsons" is still tinkering with its look after more than three decades. And it's this constant tweaking and adapting that's helped the show last through so many different eras of TV.That's what helped make "The Simpsons" the longest-running scripted primetime series, the longest-running American sitcom, and arguably the most successful animated show ever.

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