It seems that a number of giants in the wireless arena had their eyes on MetroPCS as the company accepted acquisition bids. According to reports, MetroPCS had been talking to at least eight companies and eventually decided for a merger with T-Mobile. Dish Network, which is considering the launch of a wireless carrier jointly with Google, was also among the companies who bid on the acquisition of MetroPCS.
Dish Network came up with a handsome $4 billion bid to acquire MetroPCS. Of this, 30% was to be paid in cash while the remaining 70% was to be paid in stock. While this amounts to $11 a share, there were other companies which were ready to pay MetroPCS a lot more.
A company, referred in MetroPCS’ filing as ‘Company G’ was willing to pay $13.39 per share for the acquisition. The payment would’ve been in cash and stock. Some have claimed that the company which made this offer was Sprint Nextel Corp.
Eventually, however, MetroPCS decided to sway in favor of Deutsche Telekom AG, which is the parent company of T-Mobile. Whereas the merger of MetroPCS and T-Mobile is nearing its conclusion, Sprint hasn’t lost all hope and is contemplating making yet another counter offer.
Sprint has been waiting for MetroPCS to reveal the terms of its merger and now that the filing has been made public, Sprint may devise a new strategy and come up with a new bid in an attempt to outdo T-Mobile.
Dish, however, seems out of the contest for now. However, the fact that Dish was ready to cough up $4 billion for the acquisition of MetroPCS shows that the company really has serious plans regarding wireless services in the future.
Courtesy: Business Week, WSJ
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