Thursday, October 18, 2012

Sprint Nextel Takes Controlling Stake In Clearwire

Sprint Nextel has dipped into the new stash of cash it just received from Japanese investor Softbank, and has just bought out the stake of Craig McCCaw in 4G wireless provider Clearwire. Sprint said that it will pay $100M for McCaw's 5 percent stake in Clearwire, which gives the firm a 53 percent voting stake in the 4G provider. Softbank said this week that it will buy 70 percent of Sprint for $20.1 billion, part of an expansion by that Japanese firm into the U.S. Clearwire figures greatly in that effort, as the firm builds out its new LTE 4G network -- an asset that is needed by Softbank in its U.S. plans.