AT&T Sizing Up Market Divestitures to Win FCC Approval
Aug 12, 2011, 7:14 AM by Eric M. Zeman
According to sources cited by the Wall Street Journal, AT&T has hired banking firm Bank of America Merrill Lynch to help it begin the process of selecting which markets to divest in order to gain regulatory approval of its planned T-Mobile acquisition. The combined assets of AT&T and T-Mobile will likely give AT&T too much power in certain markets, and AT&T expects the Federal Communications Commission to require divestitures in some of those markets to reduce its power. The Journal suggests that most of the divestitures will come from T-Mobile's assets rather than AT&T's and that AT&T could bring in as much as $8 billion by selling the assets to competitors. "As we said on the day we announced the merger with T-Mobile USA, we anticipate there will be some divestitures, as we have had in past mergers, but any speculation about the amount of divestitures is premature," said an AT&T spokesman. The FCC and Department of Justice are still reviewing the acquisition, which AT&T expects will close during the first quater of 2012.
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Comments
Albuquerque, NM
What does anyone think here?
Money talks
I'm sure divestitures were already put into their plan at the start of this merger.
