According to Sprint Nextel Corp, Softbank Corp has granted a waiver to allow it to review and consider a US$25.5 billion bid from rival Dish Network Corp. This comes as Softbank is pressured to improve its existing deal for the third largest wireless carrier in the United States.
Sprint though has reiterated that it still favors the Softbank agreement but an increasing number of Sprint shareholders such as Paulson and Co and Omega Advisors have made public pronouncements that the Dish deal is better than the Softbank offer.
Softbank's offer consists of US$20.1 billion for 70% of Sprint and was agreed upon last October. It further announced that it would issue 400 billion yen or US$3.9 billion worth of bonds to pay for the Sprint deal. The bond issue stands as the largest one made for a non finance company from Japan.
In the media front, Softbank President Masayoshi Son and Dish founder Charlie Ergen are sniping at one another to sway shareholders to their bids, after Dish made an offer to trump the Softbank bid for Sprint.
The said waiver issued by Softbank allows the non implementaton of some of the provisions in the merger agreement signed last October. This was filed in New York last Monday, allowing Sprint's representatives to provide Dish non-public information as well as enter into negotiations on the Dish offer.
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