AT&T Deal Highlights

Steven M. Davidoff, at the New York Times Dealbook, has a great outline of the AT&T - T-Mobile Deal. It's really worth a read (here). He explains how different the deal is for a private sale.  And, if you are someone new to all of this, it helps provide an explanation for public company complexities.  My favorite part is this:

Regulatory

AT&T and Deutsche Telecom have negotiated an elaborate risk-sharing arrangement with respect to divestiture and other steps AT&T and Deutsche Telekom must take to obtain regulatory clearance of the T-Mobile purchase.

The agreement requires that AT&T take “reasonable best efforts” to obtain regulatory clearance. This is the standard formulation. But as you would expect in this controversial deal, it gets much, much more complicated after that.

See -- I took the "easy" part.

--JPF