AT&T Plans to Acquire BellSouth in $65B Deal

In a deal
worth $65 billion, AT&T Inc. is expected to announce plans for it's' acquisition
of BellSouth Corp. as early as Monday. Under terms of the acquisition AT&T
would pay about $37 per share for Atlanta
based BellSouth which is an 18 percent increase over Friday's closing price for
BellSouth shares. The combined market capital of the two communications
companies would total nearly $160 billion, rivaling competitor Verizon
Communications Inc. Of course the announcement of such a deal would not
necessarily mean that it would make it to completion as it would first have to
be approved by regulators and could take a year or more to complete.

News source: Associated Press / Hickory Daily Record