Clearwire said it’s reviewing a revised bid by...
Clearwire said it’s reviewing a revised bid by Dish Network for at least 25 percent of its stock. The target had not yet confirmed at our deadline whether it would postpone a shareholder vote scheduled for Friday on rival bidder…
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Sprint Nextel’s offer to buy out the company. A Clearwire special committee “has not made any determination to change its recommendation of the current Sprint transaction,” the company said in a statement. Dish made a tender offer of $4.40 per share for the Clearwire stock Wednesday. The offer expires June 28 unless it’s extended (http://bit.ly/18wWzqf). Dish said its revised offer is 29 percent higher than the initial offer of $3.30 per share it made in early January, and a full dollar higher than Sprint Nextel’s “best and final offer” of $3.40 per share for the minority share of the company it doesn’t already own. Dish’s bid also includes up to $800 million in interim financing for Clearwire. Sprint is “reviewing Dish’s actions both as to our interest in Clearwire and Dish’s proposal to acquire Sprint,” a spokesman said. Dish has also made a counteroffer for control of Sprint, and continued to argue Wednesday that a purchase of the carrier by rival bidder SoftBank would be a national security risk. Crest Financial, Clearwire’s largest minority shareholder, urged Clearwire’s board Thursday to reverse its earlier recommendation of Sprint’s bid in light of Dish’s revised offer and pursue an “open and competitive bidding process.” Clearwire’s board “has a fiduciary obligation to give full consideration to Dish’s offer, which is clearly actionable, and any other eventual offers that would trump the Dish offer,” said David Schumacher, Crest’s general counsel, in a letter to Clearwire (http://on.mktw.net/12RPWst). Dish’s revised bid “seriously complicates Sprint’s bid for Clearwire,” and Clearwire’s minority shareholders would likely cheer the news because of concerns about Sprint’s offer, New Street Research analyst Jonathan Chaplin wrote investors Thursday. Dish is in a “difficult spot strategically” given the looming buildout deadlines on its spectrum, which the FCC extended through a terrestrial waiver in December, wrote Stifel Nicolaus’s Christopher King. “It needs a wireless partner, and it needs one quickly -- despite the very slow organic growth in the industry."