| Merging AT & T / T-Mobile: the American government is against |
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The American government believes that the merger between AT & T and T-Mobile is likely to alter the competition and asked to block the transaction at $ 39 billion. The initiative was bold and amount, 39 billion dollars, the stakes on offer: unite operators AT & T and T-Mobile to be the largest operator in the United States and bring to AT & T the spectrum resources of T- Mobile United States to better fight against Verizon Wireless, operator of leading American market.
Faced with such a display of force, the big loser would be Sprint Nextel, the third largest in the United States, already in trouble with AT & T and Verizon. Such a merger can only isolate a little more, with the risk of allowing the market to become a duopoly.
Early on, these issues and their consequences have worried regulators and investors held their breath without much hope (but without displaying a pessimism so far), suspecting that the antitrust commission would be hard to pass up such a proposal, despite promises from AT & T tomorrows.
And this is what just happened: the U.S. government launched a procedure to block the acquisition of T-Mobile AT & T, arguing that such a merger was likely to weaken significantly the competition by lost one of its elements of diversity and, in fact, is contrary to the antitrust laws of the country.
A refusal which would be costly
If regulators follow the government's request, the shot will be tough for AT & T will pay $ 3 billion penalty for Deutsche Telekom, parent company of T-Mobile, and give various arrangements, which could cost him a total of 7 billion.
Since the announcement of the request to block the acquisition, and deal with this new venture, investors woke up, dropping the price of AT & T 5%. "Only" 5% because all is not lost for AT & T may try to negotiate a settlement or agree to make concessions on some points in exchange for a green light from the regulator.
The operator has spared no efforts to promote the merits of such an acquisition, which he believes would drive prices down and improve service quality by aggregating the spectrum resources of the two operators.
T-Mobile
The U.S. operator AT & T said it would acquire T-Mobile, a subsidiary of the German operator Deutsche Telekom, which specializes in mobile telephony, in exchange for 8% of its capital.
Valued at $ 39 billion, this transaction is one of the largest ever made in the telecom sector. It will allow him to recover 34 million customers, which will add to the 95 million already under his belt, and position itself as a leading player in the American market of mobile telephony with 40%, just ahead of Verizon in holds 35%.
In the longer term then it will enable it to strengthen its infrastructure when the craze for smartphones explodes mobile and Internet traffic at the beginning of transition to the LTE standard, more commonly known as 4G
The transaction is expected to be completed within twelve months after approval of the U.S. competition authorities. But these are likely to appear fussy since AT & T already has a dominant position in the market, that the purchase of T-Mobile could strengthen further.
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