The rumor mill is swirling around the potential acquisition of Sprint Nextel from SK Telecom (major operator in South Korea.) Both SK Telecom and Sprint Nextel declined to comment.

A full takeover by SK Telecom is unlikely because their market value at $18 billion is less than a third of Sprint Nextel's $62 billion.




SK Telecom is seeking growth outside its home market, where four out of every five people have a mobile phone. It runs a wireless joint venture with EarthLink in the US and made a $1 billion investment in China Unicom's bonds last year, which gave it an option on a nearly 7 percent stake in China's No. 2 mobile firm.

However, its U.S. business has yet to turn around and SK Telecom said last week it and EarthLink were to inject additional funds of up to $100 million each in Helio, which rents network space from Sprint.

Sprint Nextel has been the target of takeover speculation since May after smaller rival Alltel agreed to a $25 billion buyout, although several industry experts said they doubted private equity buyers would have the appetite for a company whose market value is about $62 billion.

Others said a minority investment in Sprint Nextel looked possible given SK Telecom's push for growth overseas.

SK Telecom shares closed at 210,000 won, outperforming the benchmark index which rose 0.58 percent. Shares in Sprint Nextel were up about 4.4 percent from the market close in after hours trade.

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