While speaking to reporters today, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said that the Commission plans to vote on the pending Sirius-XM merger in the fourth quarter of this year. Martin said the FCC is trying to meet its goal of deciding on pending mergers within 180 days.
"That's our target," said Martin.
The FCC began the XM-Sirius merger proceeding on June 8th, which would put the agency on schedule to make a ruling by December 6th. Last week, we reached the half-way point of the FCC's informal timeline.
In mid-July, Bank of America analyst Jonathan Jacoby wrote in a client note that procedural hurdles to regulatory approval needed to be overcome by the September 10th date. Jacoby added that "the chance of approval increases to above 50% if the clock doesn’t stop by that date, according to our contacts."
With the Sept. 10th date having been overcome, and Martin essentially confirming publicly that the FCC does not foresee any clock-stopping events, this serves as good news for merger hopefuls.
[via Bloomberg]
Jonathan Jacoby and David Rehr met on eHarmony. Love at first type.
The 9th inning is around the corner
This is HUGE. Even Jacoby, who's been very pessimistic over the merger prospects, now has to concede that there's a >50% chance of a merger being approved.
Great find Ryan!
This is exactly the info(rumor) i heard two weeks ago stating that the merger is a done deal and the powers that be are waiting for Q4 to make the big announce. AFAIC this merger has absolutly 100% chance of passing! Print it copy it bet on it. In fact ill go so far as to say that its been a done deal since day one and this has all been an entertaining sideshow. For better or worse we now live in a world with only one satrad provider.......told ya so :P
"This is HUGE. Even Jacoby, who's been very pessimistic over the merger prospects, now has to concede that there's a >50% chance of a merger being approved."
Didnt he originally say this had no chance and gave it a very low percentage probability?? Times ARE changing and the public will benefit
ibStackPointer's NAB drivel...
>> Didnt he originally say this had no chance and gave it a very low percentage probability?? Times ARE changing and the public will benefit
Yes, I believe Jacoby said chances were less than 30%. With last night's news the chances of
merger approval have skyrocketed.
Thanks again to Ryan for maintaining this wonderful site, providing us with this information, and making me a lot of money this morning. :-)
Well I friggin' pray the Sirius stock finally spikes! The company's revenue has been growing at what? 30% plus? For a few years now, and the stock has what? Halfed? "Thirved?" COME ON! They're on track to hit black soon enough, any venture is in the red for a period, come the fuck of it market! I want to see my stock treble.
Stackpointer = David Rear