SIRIUS Satelite Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI) CEO Mel Karmazin was at an investment conference today and expressed his optimism that the merger between Sirius and XM Satellite Radio will be approved by government regulators by the end of the month.  This has sparked a somewhat huge increase trading today.  There has been a lot of optimism recently surrounding the merger and todays news really adds to the momentum it is carrying.

Reuters has quoted Karmazin as saying, “The fact that it has lingered this long, it has been interpreted … as good news.” Karmazin also went on to say, “clearly if there was a big problem with the merger, it wouldn’t take the (regulators) this long to figure it out. Either you believe we compete with a whole bunch of audio choices or you think there’s a distinct market called satellite radio.”

SIRI was seen trading at up around 2.89 +0.14 (5.09%) while XMSR is also up at 11.71 +0.62 (5.59%) .