Dish offers to buy Sprint for $25.5 billion

Dish Network Corp offered to buy Sprint Nextel Corp for $25.5 billion in cash and stock, a move that could thwart Sprint's proposed acquisition by Japan's SoftBank Corp <9984.T>.

Dish said it would pay $4.76 per share in cash and about 0.05953 in Dish stock, a premium of roughly 12 percent to Sprint's close on Friday.

Sprint agreed in October to sell 70 percent of its shares to SoftBank for $20 billion.

(Reporting by Sayantani Ghosh in Bangalore; Editing by Roshni Menon)