SoftBank Corp of Japan had completed another step in its current bid to acquire Sprint Nextel Corp, the US wireless provider. This comes after Dish Network Corp had refused to provide a new offer after SoftBank had upped the ante on its bid for Sprint.
SoftBank founder and CEO comes closer to the completion of the largest overseas purchase done by a Japanese firm in history after it had received support from a key shareholder after increasing the per share bid price from US$20.1 billion to US$21.6 billion.
This has become a battle of wills between the conservative Son from SoftBank against the aggressive risk taking Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen. In a statement, SoftBank said, "We look forward to receiving the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) and shareholder approvals which will allow us to close in early July and begin the hard work of building the new Sprint into a meaningful 3rd competitor in the US market."
Dish was unable to provide a new bid past the deadline because of internal changes within the company had made breaking up the company much more expensive, thus making it more difficult for Dish to compete with the improved SoftBank bid.
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