At our deadline Fri., Vodafone and Cingular Wireless were expecte...

would be made public, although AT&T Wireless’s board was expected to meet Sat. Legg Mason said in a research note last week that Cingular was the most likely winner. But Legg Mason said if Vodafone weighed in with a bid, Cingular could explore alternatives, such as pursuing T-Mobile USA if it didn’t win the auction for AT&T Wireless. “There have been preliminary discussions with Cingular and T-Mobile in the past so this option is not far- fetched, but the drawback is that T-Mobile has no interest in selling below its book value of approximately $22 billion,” Legg Mason said. It said that sum would be 10 times higher than the company’s projected earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, which would be a significant premium to the 7 to 8 times multiple that AT&T Wireless might attain in its own bidding process. As for a Vodafone bid, Legg Mason said the biggest challenge would be the company unwinding its 45% stake in Verizon Wireless, its joint venture with Verizon. Another possibility stirring speculation Fri. was the emergence of Nextel as an AT&T Wireless bidder. Legg Mason said it didn’t expect a Nextel bid, but if it did, it probably would be based on concerns that “another company doesn’t obtain the wireless assets ‘on the cheap,'” it said. Meanwhile, UBS said in a research note Fri. that the sale of AT&T Wireless to either Cingular or Vodafone could affect the ownership of Venezuelan telco CANTV. If Vodafone won AT&T Wireless, Verizon would be likely to buy out Vodafone’s 45% minority stake in their joint venture. That could be financed in part by the sale of Verizon’s 28.5% ownership of CANTV, in which Verizon is the single largest shareholder, UBS said. Potential buyers could include Mexico’s Telmex or Spain’s Telefonica, it said. Medley Global Advisers said in a research note last week that regardless of whether Cingular or another carrier won the AT&T Wireless bidding, a “complicated and time-consuming merger review process” lay ahead at the FCC and Dept. of Justice. “The process will be cumbersome due to the range of technical and political issues that will need to be addressed,” it said, including questions on the appropriate ownership of spectrum in overlapping markets. In general, one scenario on which analysts were speculating last week was that a decision by AT&T Wireless could be announced as early as today (Tues.), although a bidder could still enter the fray beyond the 5 p.m. Feb. 13 deadline that the carrier had set for bids. As of late Fri., Vodafone reportedly was mulling a $34 billion bid for AT&T Wireless.