SoftBank to raise $41bn in asset sale
March 25, 2020
By Chris Forrester
Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, which has a large number of media-related investments, is to mount a $41 billion (€37.8bn) sale of assets despite its share price having halved in the past month.
The technology company’s $100 billion Vision Fund investment division either owns or has significant investments in companies as diverse as UK chip-maker ARM, a $120 billion stake in Chinese ecommerce outfit Alibaba, around $3 billion invested in embryonic satellite operator OneWeb and a large stake in US telco Sprint.
However, the investment company has been under extreme pressure these past weeks including loss-making office space company WeWork.
Bloomberg described the SoftBank move as being close to a distressed “fire sale” and that the market in its stock has been “plunging”. However, Japan’s stock market saw a 19 percent recovery overnight on March 24th. The cash raised will be used by SoftBank to buy back its own shares for cancellation.