International politics emerging as a factor in Sprint/T-Mobile merger

One of the federal agencies that must sign off on the proposed merger between Sprint and T-Mobile is the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS), and that agency has become a more important factor in recent international merger-and-acquisition action.  Indeed, under the Trump administration and led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the CFIUS played a critical role in ultimately blocking Broadcom’s attempted hostile takeover of Qualcomm over national security concerns. Such concerns may well factor into the proposed merger of Sprint and T-Mobile, largely due to the holdings of Sprint parent SoftBank. SoftBank is the biggest shareholder in China’s Alibaba, Taiwan’s Foxconn is an investor in the Vision Fund from SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, and that China’s Huawei is a SoftBank equipment supplier.