In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), US mobile operators T-Mobile US and Sprint Corp have extended the Outside Date (i.e. the time period after which the parties may walk away from the merger agreement) for their pending USD26 billion tie-up – until 29 July 2019. The move comes one year after the merger was first agreed (29 April 2018), as the deal continues to face opposition from the Department of Justice (DoJ) and some state antitrust officials.
As previously reported by TeleGeography’s CommsUpdate, in April 2018 T-Mobile and Sprint entered into a definitive agreement to merge in an all-stock transaction. They seek to create a company which will be 41.7% owned by T-Mobile’s parent Deutsche Telekom (DT, which would have overall control) and 27.4% owned by Sprint parent SoftBank Group Corp, with the remaining 30.9% in free float.