T-Mobile

MetroPCS shareholders have voted in favor of the proposed merger deal with T-Mobile USA, Reuters reported. The approval comes only after Deutsche Telekom was forced to sweetened its offer for the wireless carrier after shareholders were advised to vote against the original proposal. Federal regulators at the FCC and Justice Department voiced their support for the merger in March, and the MetroPCS board unanimously approved the deal earlier this month. The merger will help T-Mobile expand its 4G LTE network to cover more than 200 million customers in the United States by the end of 2013. The deal is expected to close later this year.

The merger between T-Mobile and MetroPCS is very close to getting official now that Deutsche Telekom’s revised offer has led some major shareholders to drop their objections to the deal. MetroPCS announced on Monday that its board of directors had unanimously approved the new merger terms and said that the revised deal “significantly improves the value of the proposed combination for MetroPCS stockholders” while adding that the proposed merger “is in the best interest of all MetroPCS stockholders.” The MetroPCS merger is the linchpin of T-Mobile’s strategy to expand its operations in the United States since the prepaid wireless carrier already offers LTE services in several major metropolitan markets. MetroPCS shareholders are scheduled to vote to approve or reject the merger on April 24th.

Deutsche Telekom’s latest effort to sweeten its offer to MetroPCS (PCS) shareholders has apparently done the trick as Bloomberg reports that MetroPCS’s biggest shareholder has now tentatively come out in favor of its merger with T-Mobile. Paulson & Co., the hedge fund founded by famous investor John Paulson, said on Thursday that it “intends to vote for the merger as restructured” now that Deutsche Telekom has upped its offer, although the firm said it still needs “to review the revised proxy statement before making a final decision.” With Paulson likely to drop opposition to the acquisition, though, it seems that the final hurdle to MetroPCS and T-Mobile merging is about to be cleared.