Deutsche Telekom has agreed to a plan proposed by Softbank to sell T-Mobile US to the Japanese telco, Kyodo news agency claimed with reference to industry sources. Softbank chair Masayoshi Son proposed the acquisition to senior management at DT and…
Deutsche Telekom has agreed to a plan proposed by Softbank to sell T-Mobile US to the Japanese telco, Kyodo news agency claimed with reference to industry sources.
Softbank chair Masayoshi Son proposed the acquisition to senior management at DT and T-Mobile in mid-May and received a positive response, Kyodo wrote according to Reuters. The deal would see T-Mobile merge with Softbank’s US subsidiary Sprint Corp.
Sprint was previously reported to have held talks with six banks to discuss potential financing structures should it make an offer for the rival operator.
Sprint’s CFO and its treasurer were said to have met with bankers from Goldman Sachs, Citi, JP Morgan, Mizuho, BofA Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank to work out how much it should borrow.
DT CEO Timotheus Hoettges said earlier this month that he was open to do a deal with Softbank, but was concerned that US regulators preferred a four player market.
Meanwhile Son has been banging the drum for a deal for months. This week he highlighted the mergers between Comcast and Time Warner Cable and AT&T and DirecTV, saying that along with Verizon Communications the companies would constitute an oligopoly of three major players in terms of internet access. The Japanese executive said he wanted to be the number four, but needed the regulators to allow a merger.
T-Mobile, which is 67%-owned by DT, has seen its share price rise 2.24% since the report was published. The operator has a market capitalisation of US$28.25bn, net debt of US$14.6bn, and an estimated price tag of US$50bn.