In the wake of a an extremely amped up event at last nights T-Mobile Un-Carrier 5.0/6.0 unveiling, there is more news surrounding the Sprint and T-Mobile merger that has been the talk of the wireless town for quite some time. Among all the hype over T-mobile’s brand new offerings, and Sprint’s seemingly lack there of, we shouldn’t forget that at some point the possibility of these two companies merging is a reality. How probable that reality is remains to be seen, but according to Reuters at least the financing part of the deal seems to be making some headway. In the end it could still be all for naught if the FCC and other regulators don’t approve the deal that has been reached, but we’ll just have to wait and see how that part plays out when we get to it.
The entire deal apparently reaches a total cost of $40 billion. Half of that comes from the loan that Sprint owner Softbank lent to Sprint, and the other half comes from the existing debt that T-Mobile has that needed to be refinanced. Out of eight total banks that Sprint had lined up to propose the deal to, five of them are global banks and have agreed to step and in and finance the loan and debts that make up the deal, which are JP Morgan Chase and Co, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs Group, and Deutsche Bank AG.
The other three banks in the mix were brought into the fold by Softbank Corp. and include Mizuho Financial Group Inc, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, which are all Japanese banks. Now that Sprint apparently has its financing woes taken care of, the FCC just has to approve the whole deal. The idea is to have the merger be announced by sometime later this summer, around August, and according to the unnamed source at Reuters the plan is to have all the financing details wrapped up within a month from now to make an August announcement possible. This still doesn’t mean that the merger will happen, but with the money factor out of the equation, it puts Sprint one step closer to reaching their goal of a successful merger.