Sprint, the No. 3 U.S. wireless carrier, is getting close to finalizing a deal to acquire the No. 4 carrier, T-Mobile, for about $40 a share, Bloomberg Businessweek reports, citing "people with knowledge of the matter." That values T-Mobile, the U.S. subsidiary of Germany's Deutsche Telekom, at about $31 billion.
The deal isn't expected to be announced until July, maybe August. The big hurdle would be convincing antitrust regulators that the merger is good for consumers. "In order to compete against the big two, AT&T and Verizon, scale is essential," Satoru Kikuchi, an analyst at SMBC Nikko Securities, Tokyo, tells Bloomberg. "The mobile-phone industry is an industry that needs business investment, so the larger the better." Oddo & Co. analyst Alexandre Iatrides puts the odds of regulatory approval at 30-40 percent.
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