Although Sprint and T-Mobile are facing some steep regulatory hurdles, the two companies are apparently going to try to go ahead with their merger anyway. The Wall Street Journal’s sources say that Sprint parent company SoftBank and T-Mobile parent company Deutsche Telekom have agreed to a deal that will see SoftBank acquire a majority stake in T-Mobile for $40 per share in a deal worth $50 billion. T-Mobile’s shares closed trading Wednesday at $34.28 each while its market cap stood at $27.46 billion, so it looks like DT will be getting a nice premium from SoftBank in the deal, especially since the Journal’s sources say it would retain a 15% to 20% stake in T-Mobile even after the deal is complete. SoftBank has argued that it needs T-Mobile to build Sprint into a truly competitive wireless carrier, although its arguments have been greeted with skepticism by regulators so far.
UPDATE: The original WSJ report said that the merger would be worth $50 billion, but it has since changed its report and is now saying it will be worth $32 billion.
