ANALYSIS: Judge Credited Sprint/TMo Efficiencies. That’s Big.

TMobile US Inc.‘s $26.5 billion bid to swallow Sprint Corp. won a big boost on Feb. 11, when the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed a challenge to the deal brought by a group of state attorneys general.

Judge Victor Marrero held that the states had shown the merger would increase TMobile’s market share substantially in a very concentrated market—currently there are four cellular telephone companies and, post-merger, there will be only three. But he concluded that anticompetitive harm from the deal isn’t “reasonably likely” in light of “numerous considerations.”

There is a lot ...