While Sprint was reportedly in the process of acquiring T-Mobile, French carrier Iliad had come forward and expressed their interest as well, although it seems that they were not able to offer up as much as Sprint. However now that Sprint is out of the picture, could T-Mobile’s parent company Deutsche Telekom be open to talks with Iliad?
While it remain to be seen if Deutsche Telekom will bite, Bloomberg is reporting that Iliad has plans to sweeten the deal. Instead of purchasing 56.6% of T-Mobile as previously intended, Iliad will be purchasing a larger chunk and possibly take T-Mobile off Deutsche Telekom’s hands, who at the moment owns over 66% of the carrier.
However it seems that Iliad will not be able to meet Deutsche Telekom’s expected price of $35 per share, although we guess a larger buyout would end up giving them more than what Iliad had originally offered. Iliad is also said to be in talks with financial institutions to raise more money, as much as $5 billion, to buyout T-Mobile.
Iliad has also given themselves a deadline which is by the end of the month to reach some kind of preliminary agreement with Deutsche Telekom. It will be interesting to see how US regulators will look at this, if it does become approved. While they might not be pleased with US carriers merging, the approval of SoftBank’s stake in Sprint could be used as a precedent to approve Iliad’s acquisition of T-Mobile.
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