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1. 🔊 What industry do you work in and what is your role?
2. 🔊 What are your responses in your role / position?
3. 🔊 Can you describe to the function of your workplace / company?
4. 🔊 How many departments, how many offices. National or International?
5. 🔊 What are the minimum requirements for employment ie Education or Experience?
6. 🔊 How many opportunities are there to ‘move up the ladder’?
7. 🔊 What is the process for changing job roles ie Interview? Test?

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🔊 General discussion about your workweek:

1. 🔊 Current projects? Deadlines? Opportunities?
2. 🔊 Anything of interest happening?

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Script

1. 🔊 Topline: Sprint and T-Mobile late on Thursday announced a revised merger agreement in which SoftBank will get a smaller share of the combined company—to reflect Sprint’s declining financials over the last two years—while T-Mobile parent company Deutsche Telekom will receive a bigger ownership stake.

by Colin Gibbs |  Oct 24, 2017

• 🔊 Deutsche Telekom is now set to own 43% of the combined company (up from below 42% when the deal was first announced almost two years ago), while SoftBank’s ownership stake will drop to around 24% from 27%, according to the announcement.
• 🔊 Common shareholders of Sprint won’t see a change in the exchange ratio, which was originally set at 9.75 Sprint shares for each T-Mobile share.
• 🔊 But under the revised merger agreement, SoftBank, which owns nearly 85% of Sprint common stock, will exchange 11 shares for each T-Mobile share, giving Deutsche Telekom a slightly larger stake in the new company.
• 🔊 The German telecom company, which owns more than 60% of T-Mobile U.S., was expected to seek a reduced purchase price for Sprint because its share price and performance have deteriorated since the agreed-upon merger price two years ago.
• 🔊 SoftBank agreed to give up 48.8 million T-Mobile shares to the combined company, which will operate under the T-Mobile name, but if the merged company’s stock price reaches $150 between 2022 and 2025, those shares could be reissued to SoftBank.
• 🔊 Both companies said on Thursday that they plan to finalize the merger as soon as April 1, which sent Sprint shares up more than 4% after the announcement, while T-Mobile shares fell 1.5%.

2. 🔊 Crucial statistics: Sprint stock rose another 6.5% on Friday morning, while T-Mobile shares fell 0.7%.Before the merger was approved by a judge last week, Sprint shares were trading at a 45% discount to the value of the deal, according to the Financial Times. Even after Sprint stock soared 77% after the court ruling in favor of the merger, it remains at a slight discount—hence why Deutsche Telekom was looking to negotiate a better price.

3. 🔊 Crucial quote: “Today’s announcement is another significant step forward toward finally closing this transaction! Throughout this journey, T-Mobile and Sprint have been singularly focused on one thing: building a supercharged Un-carrier that will offer U.S. consumers a broad and deep nationwide 5G network, more choice and greater competition,” said T-Mobile CEO John Legere. “We are now on the threshold of achieving our goal.”

4.🔊 Key background: The move to renegotiate the terms of the deal comes right after a federal judge last week approved the $26 billion mergers. After two years of regulatory limbo, T-Mobile finally won approval to take over Sprint, defeating a lawsuit from state attorneys general, which claimed the deal would hurt consumers by eliminating competition. Under the merger, a combined company—which will operate under T-Mobile’s name, would have around 80 million regular monthly subscribers. That would put it on par with major network operators like Verizon, with 114 million subscribers, and AT&T, with 75 million.

1.🔊 What is your mobile carrier, why did you choose that network?

2.🔊 What can mobile operators attract more customers? 

3.🔊 How many hours do you spend on your phone on a daily basis. What are the pros and cons of having a smartphone?

 

Keywords

1. 🔊 merger = a combination of two things, especially companies, into one.
2. 🔊 deteriorated = to become worse:
3. 🔊 reissued = to print or produce something again:
4. 🔊 soared = to rise very quickly to a high level:
5. 🔊 hence = that is the reason or explanation for:
6. 🔊 supercharged = very fast or energetic:
7. 🔊 threshold = the floor of an entrance to a building or room
8. 🔊 limbo =an uncertain situation that you cannot control and in which there is no progress or improvement:
9. 🔊 lawsuit = a problem taken to a law court by an ordinary person or an organization rather than the police in order to obtain a legal decision:
10. 🔊 attorneys = a lawyer :