Iliad today said it is dropping its bid to acquire T-Mobile.
The French mobile provider said in a press release that Deutsche Telekom (DT), majority owner of T-Mobile, and select board members of T-Mobile’s board “refused to entertain its new offer.”
Iliad said it was able to secure further financing from private equity funds and banks in order to improve upon its initial bid for 56.6 percent of T-Mobile ($33 per share). The new bid was for 67 percent and according to Iliad it valued T-Mobile at around $36 per share when factoring in cash and share of value creation.
DT owns 67 percent of T-Mobile.
Iliad had reportedly set a mid-October deadline to either improve or drop its T-Mobile bid. The carrier today said it had hoped to help T-Mobile accelerate its transformation and to save its more than $2 billion in annual costs.
DT was reportedly looking for an offer with a minimum valuation of $35 per share. But additional reports suggested that DT had decided to hang onto its T-Mobile stake at least until after next year’s 600 MHz Incentive Auctions.
While addressing Iliad’s bid at the GeekWire conference, T-Mobile CEO John Legere seemed to downplay the potential merger and insisted that T-Mobile will continue to be a target of interest for would-be suitors.
