SoftBank writes off £380m in OneWeb
August 19, 2019
By Chris Forrester
Japanese investment fund SoftBank has written down the value of its significant stake in satellite constellation OneWeb by £380 million (€414.7m).
OneWeb has also attracted investment cash from Virgin Group, Airbus and others, and while it already has 6 trial satellites orbiting, plans on increasing the fleet by about 650 satellites over the next 2 years.
SoftBank, via its Vision Fund, has invested two major tranches of cash into OneWeb. As part of its initial funding it received around $1 billion from the Japanese bank in 2015 plus an additional $1.25 billion earlier this year.
Softbank owns some 47 per cent of OneWeb, according to filings with UK regulators.