Time to check another item off of SoftBank, Sprint and Clearwire's collective to-do list. Clearwire just announced that its shareholders have "overwhelmingly" approved the company's proposed acquisition by Sprint. Clearwire reports that 82 percent of its outstanding common stock that's unaffiliated with Sprint and SoftBank voted in favor of the transaction, with that number growing to 95 percent of the unaffiliated common stock when Sprint's 50.2 percent portion of the shares were taken into consideration. Clearwire and Sprint expect the deal to close tomorrow, July 9.
Sprint initially announced its plans to acquire the remaining portion of Clearwire that it didn't already own way back at the end of 2012, but Dish threw a wrench in those plans by submitting several offers of its own for Clearwire. After a bit of a bidding war, Dish relented and withdrew its offer, leaving Sprint free to resume its acquisition of Clearwire.
Now that both the SoftBank-Sprint and Sprint-Clearwire deals have gained FCC approval and been approved by the shareholders of the companies involved, the deals are very nearly done. SoftBank has announced that it anticipates consummating its deal with Sprint on July 10, so it looks like the three companies involved will be one big happy family before the week is up.
