LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Alltel Corp. is being acquired by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and TPG Inc. for $27.5 billion including about $2.8 billion in debt in the telecommunications sector’s largest-ever leveraged buyout, Bloomberg News said. In January 2006, TDC A/S of Denmark was acquired for $15.3 billion including debt by a group led by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and the Blackstone Group LP.
Alltel shareholders will receive $71.50 per share, the mobile phone company said in a statement yesterday. The offer represents a 9.6-percent premium on Friday’s closing price for Alltel shares, Bloomberg said, and a 2.1-percent premium on the $70-per-share bid predicted by Michael Nelson, an analyst at Stanford Group Co.
The transaction will give control of the nation’s fifth-biggest wireless company and its largest geographic network to TPG (formerly Texas Pacific Group) and the buyout unit of Goldman Sachs.
“It’s a very positive outcome for investors. It’s generous,” John Hodulik, an analyst at UBS AG in New York, who owns no Alltel shares, told Bloomberg News. But the news led Standard & Poor’s to lower its rating of Alltel’s long-term debt from -A to BB, the ratings company said.
