Crayton Harrison

Billionaire Carlos Slim will buy out AT&T’s $6 billion stake in America Movil SAB, propping up his Latin American mobile-phone company’s stock price as his longtime partner from the US exits the business. Slim’s holding company, Inmobiliaria Carso, told America Movil’s board it will acquire AT&T’s 8.3 percent stake, which includes 24 percent of the company’s voting shares, according to a filing. America Movil didn’t say how much Carso would pay, and Roberta Thomson, an AT&T spokeswoman, wasn’t immediately available for comment. The stake’s value of $6 billion is based on the closing price for the shares. AT&T is selling its holdings of Slim’s company after a 24-year relationship to avoid a conflict of interest because the Dallas-based company is buying DirecTV, which competes with America Movil for pay-TV customers across Latin America.

SoftBank President Masayoshi Son said he’ll start a “massive price war” in the US if regulators let his Sprint purchase T-Mobile US.

The billionaire, who bought control of the third-largest wireless carrier in 2013, said combining with fourth-ranked T-Mobile would give him scale to compete against AT&T and Verizon Communications. Those operators collect most of the US mobile industry’s cash flow and don’t face “real competition,” Son said in an interview with PBS’s Charlie Rose.

[March 11]