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Media

Sirius (SIRI) Deal With XM (XMSR) Heads For The Barn

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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The FCC says it is getting closer to announcing its opinion of the Sirius (NASDAQ: SIRI) merger with XM Satellite (NASDAQ: XMSR). That may not be good news. The commission may turn the deal down.

According to The Wall Street Journal FCC boss Kevin Martin said "he had asked his staff to draft a document incorporating a variety of possible outcomes for the merger proposal."

In the case of the merger, no news is bad news. Aside from the likelihood that a long review may be a result of the FCC and Justice Department building a case again the deal, over the last year the finances of both companies have gotten worse.

In the last quarter, the subscriber growth at XM and Sirius slowed. Both lost money and face tremendous debt service. Each company has more than $1 billion in long-term debt on its balance sheet.

If the merger gets killed, one of the companies may not make it. The balance sheet and P&L problems are just that tight.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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