With words like f there were any gloves still on, they’re definitely off now. Sprint says that Dish’s latest last minute bid for Clearwire is ‘not actionable’, while Crest Financial is demanding Sprint not interfere and that the special committee be reinstated to consider Dish’s bid. By ‘not actionable’, Sprint means that in order to agree to Dish’s bid Clearwire’s board would have to violate both its agreements with Sprint and Delaware law too – but the details are for lawyers.
In a larger sense it’s all moot, since Sprint can make any outside bid ‘not actionable’ by simply voting its majority stake against it. But Sprint wants to make the Dish bid go away now so it can gain shareholder approval, not wait 3 months for the Clearwire board to go through the motions and cover its own posterior along the way. The vote has already been delayed of course, and Clearwire hasn’t said much else.
Ad for Crest Financial they issued a demand that “interfere with the Clearwire board of directors’ full consideration of DISH’s tender offer”. How exactly a majority shareholder can ‘not interfere’ with a bid for the company is an open question, really. But what Crest wants is just want a better deal for all that spectrum, and Dish’s last minute re-entry revived their hopes of pressuring another dollar or more per share out of Sprint/Softbank.
It’s a mess, and it’s not going to get clean anytime soon. But in the end it’s all about money, sooner or later the various parties are going to have to sit down and divvy up the loot. It’s just amazing though, isn’t it, that both Sprint and Clearwire are in such demand now after so many years in one investors’ doghouse after another.
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Categories: Mergers and Acquisitions · Wireless
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Crest just seems to be a pain in the ass.