Telecom & Wireless

More Attempts to Block the Clearwire Buyout on the Cheap

Clearwire Corp. (NASDAQ: CLWR) is facing yet another attempt to block the Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) buyout as part of the Softbank deal. A group called Crest Financial is making a demand for Clearwire’s list of shareholders, and it has also hired a proxy solicitation firm named D.F. King & Co. to assist in its deal.

The move is to help Crest Financial oppose Clearwire acquisition and claims to be the largest Clearwire shareholder that is unaligned with Sprint. The company’s press release shows that it holds roughly 3.9% of all of Clearwire’s common stock.

Crest Financial said:

The Sprint-Clearwire merger agreement requires the approval of holders of a majority of the Clearwire common stock not held by Sprint, which means that the transaction would not be approved if shareholders with approximately 25% of all common stock of Clearwire either vote against the merger or do not vote at all. Accordingly, in addition to the Clearwire shares held by Crest, only approximately 21.1% of the other shareholders need to vote against the Sprint-Clearwire merger or not vote at all in order to block the transaction.

Crest also has filed a lawsuit in Delaware against Sprint and the current Clearwire directors as it believes that the defendants breached their fiduciary duties “by scheming to extract value from Clearwire at the expense of the minority shareholders.”

Another action taken is that Crest has petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to stop the proposed Softbank-Sprint and Sprint-Clearwire mergers as they would treat minority shareholders of Clearwire unfairly and the mergers would not be in the public’s best interest.

Clearwire is unchanged at $3.23 this morning, against a 52-week range of $0.83 to $3.42.

 

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