Senators Taking Sides In AT&T/T Mobile Merger 124
Sniper98G writes "US senators have no official power to block the AT&T/T Mobile merger. But that has not stopped them from making strong recommendations to the FCC and the department of justice. This whole situation has left me asking 'If the US senate and house are so concerned about a Triploy in wireless communication, where are the hearings about why most US household only have access to one or two wired communication providers?'"
Re:Wireless = National, Wired = Local (Score:5, Informative)
^What? There is *no* competition in "most markets" for wired communication. None. Zero. Nada. There's so much conspiring to work against it that it's sickening. MOST wired "competition" is merely reselling connections from the larger providers in a way to lower the cost through the purchase of bulk bandwidth. As an example in Canada, Rogers and Teksavvy.
AT&T and Verizon are known to do this in the US as well with small providers.
business literature (Score:5, Informative)
It's well established in the business literature that large stock mergers like this almost always hurt the acquiring company's stock holders, as well as employees and consumers. I'd imagine this even applies to the acquired company's stock holders.
As a rule, the only people that benefit from the acquisition are the executives of the acquiring company, who's power & compensation increase vaguely proportionally to the size of the company they run. In effect, the acquiring executives are devaluing their own stock holders investments to make themselves more important and force those stock holders to vote them more compensation.
Just fyi, cash mergers average out like investing in the S&P500. In a cash merger, the acquiring company's executives have real utility for cash on hand, so they negotiate a fair price or make better strategic decisions even when overpaying. In the stock merger, they simply acquire the largest company possible using other people's money.