Goldman Sachs buys Alltel for $27.5 billion

Alltel

Texas Pacific Group and the private-equity arm of Goldman Sachs are buying Alltel for $27.5 billion, the wireless company announced Sunday night.

Alltel shareholders will receive $71.50 a share, nearly a 10 percent premium over the stock's closing price Friday.

The purchase will give Texas Pacific and GS Capital Partners the largest geographic wireless network in the country. Alltel has 12,000 wireless customers.

Alltel Chief Executive Scott Ford will keep his post.

The Little Rock, Ark., company bought Bellevue-based Western Wireless in 2005.

The company recently announced it would close its Issaquah call center by this fall, eliminating 260 jobs.

AT&T

Cingular brand will be no more

AT&T, which includes the former Cingular Wireless, plans to announce today a new branding strategy.

Sunday night, AT&T was expected to replace the Cingular brand with AT&T on all the signs in the company stores and kiosks at about 1,800 locations. In addition, some exterior signs will be changed.

The Cingular brand was expected to stick around until consumers became aware the brand was now AT&T.

That brand awareness is ahead of expectations, based on research the company conducted.

San Antonio-based AT&T said the store makeovers are critical for the late-June launch of the Apple iPhone. AT&T will be the iPhone's exclusive wireless provider in the U.S.

Boeing

Royal Jordanian wants 2 787 jets

Royal Jordanian ordered two 787s, took options for two more and plans to lease eight, the companies said Sunday.

The order for 787-8s is worth about $306 million at list prices, though airlines typically negotiate discounts.

The two planes had previously been listed on Boeing's Web site as an order coming from an unidentified customer.

The airline said it will start taking delivery of the planes in 2010.

IBM

June launch set for Power6 chip

Delivering on its promise of a superfast server chip, IBM said today its new Power6 microprocessor will go on sale next month, boasting twice the clock speed of the previous generation while consuming roughly the same amount of power.

Analysts said the chip, which operates at 4.7 gigahertz and cycles at a speed 25 million times as fast as the flap of hummingbird wings, will allow businesses to consolidate servers and handle substantially larger workloads.

The new IBM chip also has massive bandwidth — 300 gigabytes per second — which the company says can process the download of the entire iTunes music catalog in about a minute.

Compiled from Seattle Times staff, Bloomberg News and

The Associated Press