XM, Sirius Merger Vote Set
By Amy Gilroy -- TWICE, 10/4/2007
Washington — XM Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio will hold shareholder meetings on Nov. 13 to vote on the proposed Sirius-XM merger.
An XM spokesman said, “The shareholder meeting represents another step forward in the merger process.”
Sirius and XM claim they still expect the merger, which must be approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Dept. of Justice (DOJ), to be approved by the fourth quarter.
The FCC is charged with determining if the merger would be in the public interest and the DOJ determines if the merger would be anticompetitive.
If the FCC adheres to its time clock, its ruling would come in early December. The DOJ has offered no time frame for its determination.
Mel Karmazin said the DOJ continues to request information, according to a report this week from Bloomberg. Sirius would not confirm or deny the report.
Both Sirius and XM have said they are in compliance with the DOJ’s requests for information. Karmazin recently told Wall Street analysts that Sirius had filed six million copies of documents to the DOJ, in an effort which required the work of 80 lawyers.
