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Failure of Sprint/T-Mobile Merger Means a Missed Chance To Save $30B (kansascity.com)

UPDATE (11/5/17): Sprint and T-Mobile confirmed Saturday that they've ended their merger talks, saying they were "unable to find mutually agreeable terms." The Kansas City Star reports that the failure "means shareholders of the two companies gave up $30 billion or more in cost savings that their managements had expected a merger to generate.

"One combined wireless company would have needed to invest less in its network than the two competing companies spend separately... Absent a merger, Sprint now faces a highly competitive marketplace as the smallest national player and with a more aggressive rival in T-Mobile."

Several news outlets had already reported on Monday that Japan's conglomerate SoftBank, which owns Sprint, has pulled the plug on a proposed merger between the two carriers. From a report: SoftBank will reportedly propose ending merger talks with T-Mobile parent company Deutsche Telekom as soon as Tuesday, October 31st. That's according to Nikkei, which says that SoftBank wants to end merger talks due to "a failure to agree on ownership of the combined entity." It's said that Deutsche Telekom insisted on a controlling stake of the combined T-Mobile-Sprint, and that some people at SoftBank were okay with that as long as SoftBank had some sort of influence. However, SoftBank's board recently decided that it wouldn't give up control, and today it decided that it wants to call off the merger talks.
Last Monday Sprint and T-Mobile shares both fell immediately following the media reports.

2 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Trump / Russia merger - TREASON by Archangel+Michael · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    ROFL

    --
    Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  2. Trump / Russia merger - Nothing burger by Okian+Warrior · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Donald Trump is going to prison for treason, and his co-conspirators are already telling the FBI about Trump's treasonous collusion with Russia in order to save their own skin.

    The only question is - how much longer will the Republican party continue to support Moscow Donald's treasonous crime spree?

    These investigations have had no leaks, which 'kinda implies that there is no substance.

    We know that the Democrats can't help but leak juicy tidbits to the media - as an example, this grand jury indictment was *itself* leaked right before the indictment was made public (in violation of the law), but no previous results have come out.

    That's not conclusive by any means, but it's certainly suggestive. If *anything* actionable came up in the investigation, the media would be all over it months before it was made public. And I don't mean "unnamed sources hint that there's a connection, and they totally promised us that it's true" sort of crap, but actual identifiable actions that can be traced and verified.

    Additionally, public opinion hasn't been with the investigation. The response to the indictment has been "such a shocking double standard!" and "charging him with parking tickets while <this-other-person> gets away with much more".

    Wait and see - with no real evidence, there's an even chance that this will backfire on the Democrats in a big way.