Verizon can set up a trust of 43.4 million shares of MCI stock, which the company said last month it would buy from MCI’s largest shareholder, Mexican financier Carlos Slim Helu, for $1.1bn.
Verizon expects to complete the share purchase from Slim next week.
Slim’s holdings represent about a 13.4% ownership stake in MCI. By becoming the largest single MCI shareholder, Verizon would make it harder for shareholders opposed to its planned $8.4bn acquisition to block the takeover.
Some of MCI’s largest shareholders have already said they plan not to vote for board directors at MCI’s annual shareholder meeting next week as a protest to the proposed merger.
The trustee to the MCI stock, former US attorney general Dick Thornburgh, will vote the shares in support of the proposed takeover at next week’s meeting, said a Verizon statement.
