homer985

Open Letter to Sirius XM Radio

relmor said: " Mel blamed the market and because the NAB would file an appeal. NAB had plenty of time to file an appeal, trust me."



FWIW, this is not true. Karmazin stated that the NAB was shopping for a friendly Judge. Here's what this means...

If Sirius and XM took their time to close the merger -- then the NAB could have filed a quick appeal with the FCC or the Court of Appeals and at the same time, found a "friendly" Judge to issue a temporary injunction -- which would have prevented Sirius/XM from closing the merger until the Court of Appeals reached a decision on the NAB's appeal.

I speculated that this could happen quite a bit (before the FCC announced their decision and after). The NAB's goal was to slow down the merger as the process was killing these companies. But the NAB could not file an appeal until the FCC announced their decision. And if they hadn't closed the merger yet -- they could get a Judge to issue an injunction preventing it... and they'd still be sitting there today... waiting. While they'll likely win the appeal regardless, the continued waiting would continue to harm the companies.

They had no choice. Take the financing that was in front of them and close the merger as fast as possible... or still be sitting there today. And from what I hear from one of my contacts -- a portion of the XM financing had an 8/31/08 expiration date on it... had they not taken it and closed before that date, it was gone.

So I do not agree with your statement that the NAB had plenty of time; and do know that Sirius had no choice but to take the financing and close quickly.


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