S SentinelOne Inc

By Drew FitzGerald and Kate O'Keeffe 

T-Mobile US Inc. won approval from U.S. national-security officials for its planned takeover of Sprint Corp., according to people familiar with the matter, bringing the two rivals a step closer to closing their roughly $26 billion combination.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or Cfius, told the companies Monday that it had cleared the union of the No. 3 and No. 4 carriers by subscribers after several months of negotiations with company representatives, the people said.

The interagency committee, which is led by the Treasury Department, reviews foreign deals for potential national security issues and can recommend the president block transactions if such concerns aren't resolved. Japanese telecom giant SoftBank Group Corp. owns most of Sprint, while Germany's Deutsche Telekom AG is a majority shareholder of T-Mobile in the U.S.

Spokeswomen for Sprint and T-Mobile declined to comment. A Cfius spokesman also declined to comment, citing legal prohibitions on the committee's disclosures.

The deal still needs approval from antitrust authorities at the Federal Communications Commission and Justice Department. T-Mobile executives have said they expect that process to end in the second half of next year.

Write to Drew FitzGerald at andrew.fitzgerald@wsj.com and Kate O'Keeffe at kathryn.okeeffe@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 17, 2018 15:12 ET (20:12 GMT)

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