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SoftBank's $21.6 billion acquisition of Sprint will be complete on July 10th

SoftBank's $21.6 billion acquisition of Sprint will be complete on July 10th

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son hesse softbank sprint stock 1020
son hesse softbank sprint stock 1020

At long last, Spring and SoftBank have set a date for their long courtship to finally be official: as of July 10th, SoftBank will complete its $21.6 billion acquisition of the third-biggest US wireless carrier. This announcement comes a few days after the FCC officially gave the transaction the green light, marking the acquisition's final hurdle. Dish has probably been the biggest thorn in the side of SoftBank — it made an aggressive offer to buy Sprint itself as part of its attempts to get into the wireless space. However, the company pulled out of the bidding in late June, paving the way for SoftBank and Sprint to finally finish their merger. At the same time, the FCC also gave the go-ahead to Sprint's planned purchase of Clearwire — another company Dish had its sights on. What all this means for Sprint's customers remains to be seen, but with the deal set to close we should learn more about SoftBank's plans for the carrier in the near future.

Somewhat surprisingly, a whopping 97 percent of Sprint's shares will be converted to cash — which means the corresponding shareholders decided to sell their stock. Only three percent of the share are being kept and converted into stock for the "new Sprint" corporation. While it's not clear exactly how many shareholders specifically decided to jump ship, the share breakdown suggests that a lot of them decided to get out now, despite the fact that they voted for the deal.