Monday, October 30, 2017

Sprint, T-Mobile Plunge: SoftBank Calling Off Merger, Will Use Cash to Buy Canada

From ZeroHedge:
Sprint stock plunged, and was halted by the exchange volatility trigger, when the Nikkei reported moments ago that Japan's SoftBank Group plans to break off negotiations on the long-awaited merger between its subsidiary Sprint and T-Mobile US due to a failure to agree on ownership of the combined entity, "dashing the Japanese technology giant's hopes of reshaping the American wireless business."

According to The Nikkei, SoftBank is now expected to approach T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom as early as Tuesday to propose ending the negotiations. The pair had reached a broad agreement to integrate T-Mobile and Sprint - the third- and fourth-largest carriers in the U.S. - and were ironing out such details as the ownership ratio....MORE
Just joking with the Canada bit, SoftBank has bigger plans:

SoftBank In Talks To Acquire U.S. Treasury
In what some on Wall Street are calling the biggest blockbuster deal in the history of the financial sector, SoftBank confirmed today that it was in talks to acquire the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

According to SoftBank spokesperson Jonathan Hestron, the merger between SoftBank and the Treasury Department is "a good fit" because "they're in the business of printing money and so are we."

The SoftBank spokesman said that the merger would create efficiencies for both entities: "We already have so many employees and so much money flowing back and forth, this would just streamline things."...
I apologize, that is fāke news, I couldn't help myself.
It's actually a rewriting of a 2009 bit of genius from Andy Borowitz, then scribing for the Huffpo and now at the New Yorker....