OVERLAND PARK, Kan. â A month after being challenged by a rival to raise its bid for Sprint Nextel, Japan's Softbank did just that, by $1.5 billion.
That brings Softbank's total bid to $21.6 billion for the nation's third-largest carrier, which is still short of the $25.5 billion offered by the rival Dish Network in April.
Sprint, based in Overland Park, Kan., said already said it's determined that Dish will not be able to come up with an offer superior to Softbank's. It ended discussions with Dish and gave it a June 18 deadline for a best and final offer.
The revised deal announced late Monday by Softbank suggests that it still seeks to mollify any Sprint shareholders who are not yet sold on the deal.
The new offer pushes even more cash to Sprint shareholders: $16.6 billion, up from $12.1 billion. In exchange, Softbank will own about 78 percent of Sprint, compared with a previous 70 percent.
Shares of Sprint climbed 3 percent, or 22 cents, to $7.40 Tuesday before markets opened.
Sprint's second largest shareholder, Paulson & Co., said it will vote all its shares in favor of Softbank's sweetened offer. And Softbank, even before the revised offer this week, had secured the endorsement of shareholder advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services.
ISS believes the Softbank bid would ease Sprint's debt burden and provide enough cash to improve its network. ISS noted that mobile data in Japan travels nearly twice as fast as mobile data in the United States, and Softbank's expertise could eventually make Sprint's network faster than AT&T and Verizon.
