Last week, rumors were aplenty and booming when a report broke that Dish Network and T-Mobile were in advanced talks to come to some sort of arrangement and merge. These were not new rumors and had been circulating for some time. Not to mention, neither CEO did anything to try and silence the rumors, by occasionally publicly declaring their respect for each other or what the other company was doing/trying to do. As such, it was always taught that something was happening between the two. Therefore, when the reports broke last week, in spite of any firm or official confirmation, it was quickly seen as an end to the rumor saga.
That said, the reports that followed from various analysts and even the CEO of Deutsche Telekom (who are a majority stakeholder in T-Mobile), all placed doubts that the deal was likely to go ahead, suggesting that it was not particularly in anyone’s best interest for T-Mobile and Dish to merge. In fact, the Deutsche Telekom CEO even made it clear he would prefer a Sprint deal over a Dish one. Either way, the analysts and DT CEO were only making their feelings clear. The doubts were not any indication that the merger was not going to happen, in the same way that the previous rumors had not been any confirmation that it was going to happen.
Well, the latest on this front is now coming from the Wall Street Journal (source link below) who are stating that Dish are in talks with banks to secure funding to finance the merge. According to the details, which are coming from the typical “people familiar with the matter”, Dish are looking for between $10 and 15 billion to secure the deal. This will be used to make up the monetary portion of a bid and due to T-Mobile’s estimated market value to be around the $31 billion marker, it is expected that stocks would be used to make up the majority and remainder of the deal. The same sources go on to suggest that Deutsche Telekom will become a minority stakeholder in the new merged company. However, it is also worth pointing out that in spite of this latest news snippet further confirming the likelihood of the merge, the same sources detail that it is still possible that a deal will not be made between the two.