Clearwire board votes for Dish over Sprint

The board of directors at US wimax (and proposed LTE) operator Clearwire has unanimously voted to recommend an offer from US satellite provider Dish Network, rather than mobile operator Sprint. Dish Network has offered to acquire all outstanding common shares of Clearwire at a price of $4.40 per share while Sprint offered just $3.40 per share.

Clearwire’s Board voted for Dish based on recommendations from its Special Committee; a group consisting of independent, non-Sprint-affiliated directors.

Sprint will still remain the controlling shareholder in the company though, even if all outstanding common shares are sold to Dish, as it would still have 50.4 per cent of the voting shares and 68.2 per cent of the equity.

In related news, Japan’s Softbank increased the value of its own offer for Sprint by $1.5bn to $21.6bn earlier this week in an attempt to seal shareholder acceptance of the deal. As well as increasing the total amount payable the deal has been restructured to give shareholders an additional $4.5bn.

Softbank’s share in New Sprint (the holding company which will own Sprint if the deal goes through) rises to 78 per cent under the amended offer.