It
seems that the suitor well for Bellevue-based T-Mobile has dried up
for the foreseeable future. The French-based Iliad group decided to
take a look at other prospects after T-Mobile's parent company
Deutsche Telekom said no to a second bid to buy the Bellevue-based
cellular provider.
The
Ilaid group first became interested
in back in July when the French company was looking to grab a
foothold in the United States cellular business. From the very start
Iliad had some competition as Sprint-Nextel was also bidding to win
the hand of the Bellevue-based T-Mobile. For the next months both
suitors wined and dined T-Mobile until early in August when T-Mobile
told Iliad that their offer just wasn't good enough. The next day
Sprint-Nextel walked out leaving T-Mobile standing
alone again.
Not
long after the double break up Iliad went to T-Mobile's parent
company Deutsche Telekom to say they would look for help to make a
better
offer. When the Iliad group came back they said they were
prepared to up their offer from 56.6% of T-Mobile's stock to 67%. At
hearing the terms both Duetsche Telekom and T-Mobile said no. With
that second rejection Iliad said we will not try again.
"There
haven't been any other viable offers that have emerged since Sprint
backed out, and that was not a formal offer to boot. There may be
some questions about the price a larger buyer is prepared to pay in
turn for a regulatory battle they may have to face," said Bill
Menezes, an analyst at Gartner.
Dish
Network also had at onetime showed some interest in T-Mobile but
seems to have had cold feet and backed out. At one point Dish had
said that they probably would not make an offer until after the
spectrum auctions in November so there is still a chance they are in
the running.
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