A large Clearwire Corp shareholder said on Friday it plans to ask the U.S. telecoms regulator to block the sale of the wireless service provider to its majority owner, Sprint Nextel Corp, stepping up the investor's campaign against the deal.Crest Financial's general counsel also said on a call with reporters that it also plans to ask the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to block Sprint's plan to sell 70 percent of itself to Softbank Corp of Japan for $20 billion.Going to the FCC is a new line of attack on the Sprint deal by Crest, which has also filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of Clearwire investors. Dave Schumacher, Crest's general counsel, said on Friday the fund said other minority investors told Crest they did not support the Sprint deal, but he did not provide details.The investment fund, which owns around 8 percent of Clearwire, has said Sprint's offer of $2.97 share for the roughly 50 percent of Clearwire it does not currently own, "grossly undervalues Clearwire." Sprint's offer is worth about $2.2 billion, but Schumacher said Crest had not done its own valuation and was basing its criticism of the price on estimates by analysts.
Sprint Nextel Corporation (Sprint) is a holding company, with its operations primarily conducted by its subsidiaries. Shares of S traded higher by 1.63% or $0.095/share to $5.92. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $2.10 and as high as $6.04. On average, 57635900 shares of S exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 27171116.
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