Softbank Defends Its Sprint Nextel Buyout Bid

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Although it is the frontrunner to buy out of Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S), Softbank could lose out. Its chief executive officer, Masayoshi Son, claims his offer is superior to one made by Dish Network Corp. (NASDAQ: DISH). But on paper, many people think the Dish offer trumps that of Softbank.

Son’s advantage for now is that the Sprint board has tentatively accepted Softbank’s offer. However, Sprint’s board has set a committee to review the Dish offer and, under a confidentially deal, Dish will start to look at Sprint’s books.

MarketWatch reports on the Softbank bid for Sprint Nextel:

Speaking to reporters at the Japanese company’s quarterly earnings announcement on Tuesday, Mr. Son said Dish’s $25.5 billion bid for Sprint included “misleading” statements because it didn’t compare the deal on the same terms as SoftBank’s offer.

“Dish’s offer includes statements that are misleading. It doesn’t compare apples to apples. I want to better explain to shareholders our offer so that they can properly evaluate it,” Mr. Son said.

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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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