Sprint

Softbank has officially completed its $21.6 billion acquisition of Sprint Nextel, Sprint announced Wednesday, finally closing a merger prolonged by a bidding war between SoftBank and Dish Network.

Japan-based Softbank is paying $7.65 per share in cash (about $16.6 billion) for a 78 percent ownership stake in the new company. The deal, which Sprint shareholders overwhelmingly approved late last month, won the unanimous approval of the Federal Communications Commission last week.

Dan Hesse will continue to serve as CEO of the new company, which will drop the Nextel to be known only as Sprint, while Softbank’s Masayoshi Son will become the new company’s chairman of the board of directors.

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Sprint had been in talks with SoftBank since last October regarding a $20.1 billion offer. After Dish came in with a surprise counteroffer of $25.5 billion, SoftBank in turn countered with a $21.6 billion offer it claims gives shareholders greater cash consideration.

Dish complicated the process again with an unsolicited bid to acquire Clearwire, which is majority-owned by Sprint. Sprint had announced in December that it planned to buy the remaining shares of Clearwire and combine Clearwire’s network and spectrum assets with its own. During another bidding war, Sprint sued both Dish and Clearwire to prevent the satellite TV provider’s takeover of the wireless broadband provider, alleging that Dish’s tender offer violated the rights of Sprint’s and Clearwire’s shareholders and the laws of the state of Delaware.

Eventually realizing that the price was getting too high, Dish removed its offer to acquire Sprint to focus on its acquisition of Clearwire. But late last month, Dish gave up on its $6.3 billion offer to buy Clearwire as well and on June 26 said it was withdrawing the offer. This paved the way for Clearwire to finally be bought by Sprint, a proposal Clearwire shareholders approved earlier this week.

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Sprint

SoftBank’s $20 billion merger with Sprint is just fine for a U.S. committee that monitors national security issues between companies.

Sprint announced Wednesday that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) has cleared its proposed merger with Japan’s SoftBank, saying that there are no national security issues that would make it unacceptable to the government. The companies have also signed a National Security Agreement with the U.S. government ensuring that they won’t bring any issues to the floor after their merger.

Sprint’s announcement today comes just a day after a report confirmed that the companies had been given national security approval.

Sprint said the deal is expected to close in July.

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Sprint

It appears that Verizon Wireless won’t be retaining exclusive rights to the Xoom for very long. Late yesterday an image of a Sprint-branded version of the tablet landed in an online forum.

Presumably, the device will be largely the same as the Verizon model, but it’s unknown whether this edition will be ready to support Sprint’s WiMax network out of the box. Sources close to site Android and Me have indicated that the Sprint model may come WiMax-equipped from the beginning.

The Verizon Xoom currently features 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity options with an option for users to upgrade to 4G LTE. A Wi-Fi-only version of the tablet also goes on sale at retailers nationwide in late March.

Motorola has also detailed a GSM-capable Xoom on its product page, so it remains a possibility that T-Mobile or AT&T could offer the tablet eventually. Perhaps this might be what Motorola needs to jump-start sales of the Honeycomb tablet.

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