Cingular Wins AT&T Wireless for $41 Bln

[pinniped]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=568&ncid=749&e=1&u=/nm/20040217/bs_nm/telecoms_attwireless_dc

Cingular Wins AT&T Wireless for $41 Bln
24 minutes ago Add Business - Reuters to My Yahoo!

By Kirstin Ridley and Siobhan Kennedy

LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. mobile phone operator Cingular Wireless on Tuesday won a battle to take over smaller rival AT&T Wireless after bidding $41 billion in cash and trumping cellphone titan Vodafone.

Cingular -- the second-largest U.S. mobile phone group, owned by regional carriers SBC Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. -- said it bid $15 per share for third-ranked AT&T Wireless, clinching a four-day auction.

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AT&T Wireless shares, which have not traded since Friday because of a U.S. national holiday, leapt 18 percent to $14 via agency broker Instinet

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Cingular has said it can cut costs by an annual $3.0 billion by reducing overlapping staff and assets after a merger.

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Reduce overlapping staff? You mean job cuts?

[Gman]

1. SBC found a train wreck had occurred when they bought Ameritech

and SBC got stuck cleaning it up. But they were bound and determined to do buy Ameritech. Buying Sterling Commerce was another fiasco. Buying something (anything) from AT&T could make that Ameritech fiasco look like a picnic.