Telecom Ramblings

After a dispute that lasted four months, iBasis (IBAS: chart, news) has come to terms with its majority shareholder KPN (KPN: chart, news).  KPN will pay $3 per share to buy the rest of the company, totalling $93.3M.  The special committee of IBasis’s board has unanimously approved the new bid, and thus it appears that the soap opera will come to an end.

The initial bid of $1.55 per share in mid-July went nowhere, as everyone knew it would be too low and the market bid the price up into the $1.80s immediately.  After that was formally rejected and IBasis filed a lawsuit against the deal, KPN came back with a bid of $2.25.  That bid was also rejected, but it did demonstrate that KPN was quite serious about this acquisition.  The only question was how high would they bid?  The answer apparently $3, almost twice their initial offer.  It never made much sense for KPN to worry too much about the pennies here, the difference between $48M and $93M is peanuts to a company of their size, but of course, $45M does buy a lot of peanuts no matter who is eating them.

What with Icahn’s withdrawal of his bid for XO and Ciena’s victory in the auction for Nortel, this leaves us ending the year with little drama left to play out.  What’s a blogger to do?