French telecommunications company Iliad's surprise bid for U.S. wireless carrier T-Mobile US Inc would face a far easier U.S. review process than the offer long expected from Sprint Corp, experts said. Iliad's bid, revealed on Thursday, comes as Sprint's Japanese parent SoftBank Corp and T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom AG had already agreed to broad parameters of a deal, which was unlikely to be announced until September, sources have told Reuters.But the potential tie-up of Sprint and T-Mobile, No. 3 and No. 4 U.S. carriers, had been expected to hit tough regulatory headwinds that the Iliad bid would not face."I suspect this (Iliad) deal would get through Washington much easier than the Sprint deal. I don't see any real red flags that would complicate it," said Paul Gallant, an analyst at Guggenheim Securities in Washington."There don't appear to be any competition issues the way there would be with a Sprint deal. That's the biggest different and that's significant," Gallant said.
Shares of TMUS traded higher by 6.46% or $2.0/share to $32.94. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $22.95 and as high as $35.50. On average, 3769450 shares of TMUS exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 29261168.
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