Microsoft Corp. increased its ownership stake in SkyTel Communications Inc.
Papers filed with
the Securities and Exchange Commission last week disclosed that software megalith Microsoft bought 1.54 million
shares of SkyTel’s Class A common stock last May, bringing Microsoft’s total stake in the paging carrier to 5.7
percent.
Microsoft has a long history of investing in SkyTel. According to the SEC filing, the company bought 1.75
million shares of SkyTel common stock in 1995 in exchange for 1,500 shares of common stock in Destineer Corp.,
which it in turn had purchased the previous year for $30 million. Destineer was SkyTel’s two-way paging
business.
Microsoft purchased the stock May 14 by converting 25,000 shares of Series A 7.5-percent cumulative
convertible accruable Pay-in-Kind preferred stock it had purchased in 1996 for $25 million.
According to the filing,
Microsoft and SkyTel agreed in 1996 that Microsoft would not buy more than 10 percent of SkyTel’s voting shares
before the end of March 2001, without prior approval by SkyTel’s board of directors. With a total of 3.4 million shares
of common stock, Microsoft holds 5.7 percent of SkyTel’s voting shares. Microsoft was required to file the beneficial
ownership form because its stake had grown to more than 5 percent.
In other SEC filings, Arch Communications
Group Inc. filed a S-4/A registration statement and a 424/B3 prospectus related to the stock issuance and rights offering
to be offered to MobileMedia Corp. unsecured creditors as part of the two companies’ merger agreement, now under
consideration by MobileMedia creditors
