Posted on 10/15/2012 3:42:05 AM PDT by tobyhill
Softbank reaches $20B deal to buy Sprint Nextel
Japanese mobile carrier would get 70 percent of Sprint if agreement goes through; Sprint would be tougher rival of Verizon, AT&T
Updated 5:10 a.m. ET
TOKYO Tokyo-based mobile phone company Softbank Corp. has reached a deal to acquire 70 percent of U.S. wireless carrier Sprint Nextel for $20.1 billion in the largest-ever foreign acquisition by a Japanese company.
The deal, announced Monday at a joint news conference in Tokyo by Softbank President Masayoshi Son and Sprint Chief Executive Dan Hesse, was given a green light by the boards of both companies. It still needs approval from Sprint shareholders and U.S. regulators. Softbank said the deal is expected to be completed by the middle of next year.
The deal would bring together the third-biggest mobile carriers of both Japan and the U.S., underlining the growth ambitions of Softbank, which has made a series of acquisitions and investments over the last couple of decades, including Yahoo Japan, the Japan unit of British mobile company Vodafone and Alibaba Group, a Chinese e-commerce company.
Son said the investment made sense because the U.S. is the world's biggest market in smartphones, and it was still growing.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
Barry has moved another company overseas. His master Satan will be pleased.
In April Japan cut their corporate tax rate 2.4% below US tax rate so it makes perfect sense.
It is all part of the plane to drive business out of the United States.
If Sprint was making any money it would still be taxed at the U. S. rate.
Something has to be done! I’ve been a Sprint mobile customer for almost 15 years. In the past 6 months I’ve been getting no signal in places I used to. They paid gobs of money to Apple to get the iPhone on their network and what did it do for them? Nothing.
Now they aren’t on board with the Windows Phone 8 launch. I suspect I’ll be a Verizon customer before long unless Softbank turns things around quickly.
Japanese companies have a history of overpaying for American brands.
It took Bridgestone 35 years to pay off their “investment” in Firestone.
Sprint is upgrading to their 4GLTE network and in the transition, coverage can be spotty.
I can deal with spotty coverage if I had more confidence in the transition to the brave new 4G world. I still have my Sprint Ion shirt they sent me 10 years ago! Where’s that?! :-)
But the lack of a new Windows Phone is the deal-breaker for me. HTC has a CDMA phone for Verizon coming out next month. My HTC/Sprint Arrive Windows Phone 7 is pretty beat up and my daughter wants to step up to a smartphone. I’ll be darned if I’m going to use Google anything and I’m not a big fan of Apple.
Sprint has a lot of patents.this needs to be stopped.
They have absolutely the worst customer service I’ve ever experienced.
Kiss the NASCAR Sprint Cup goodbye.
They will need a new sponsor.
The new name: SPLINT!
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