Having received the approval from the board of directors earlier in the month, the T-Mobile and MetroPCS merger was left needing only the approval from the shareholders. The original shareholder meeting was delayed, which resulted in a push back to April 24. Anyway, the shareholder meeting has taken place as expected and it looks like the merger has been approved.
The details are coming by way of Reuters, who are reporting the shareholders have “voted to approve.” As we had previously seen approval come from the Department of Justice, FCC and the Committee on Foreign Investment, this means the all the necessary parties have offered approval and we should now begin seeing details of the actual merger process.
While the approval has been given, we know that this likely comes as a result of the recently improved offer from Deutsche Telekom. News of this improved, which was said to be the “best and final” offer came from Deutsche Telekom on April 11 and included a reduction of the shareholder loans as well as a reduction on the interest rate and a longer lockup period.
To sum the offer up, the shareholder loans dropped from $15 billion to $11.2 billion, the interest rate was reduced by 50 basis points and Deutsche Telekom will not be permitted to publicly sell shares of the combined company for 18 months (which was upped from 12 months). Otherwise, it was also said that shareholders P. Schoenfeld Asset Management and Paulson & Co are now happy with these improved terms. Of course, that probably just goes to show why the merger received the shareholder approval
[via Reuters]
