First Priority
Combining Sprint and T-Mobile would create a bigger No. 3 in the U.S. market.
“The first priority, no matter what, is to settle the U.S. situation,” said Naoshi Nema, an analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald LP in Hong Kong. “They want T-Mobile to get scale.”
Still, a similar attempt by AT&T in 2011 to buy T-Mobile was blocked by regulators, arguing consumers were better off with more choices. For his part, Son argues that he’d lower prices if a deal were allowed to go through. He plans to push forward with a T-Mobile bid, people familiar with the matter said last week.
“He’s not a man that gives up lightly,” said Neil Juggins, a Hong Kong-based analyst at JI Asia Research Ltd. “If it doesn’t happen this time, that doesn’t mean that it’s never going to work. It might be that he keeps going back and going back until the regulators are prepared to listen to him.”
Alibaba Windfall
The billionaire’s patience has paid off with Alibaba, which this week filed for what may be the largest-ever initial public offering ever in the U.S. The offering may raise as much as $20 billion and also allow Yahoo! Inc., its second-largest investor, to sell part of its stake.
With all of Alibaba valued at about $168 billion based on the average estimate from analysts, SoftBank’s 34.4 percent stake is worth $57.8 billion, assuming those shares translate into the same-sized holding in the listed company and there are no conditions on their ownership.
After leading the initial $20 million investment in 2000, SoftBank subsequently bought additional shares and bonds, according to the filing. Matthew Nicholson, a Tokyo-based spokesman for SoftBank, declined to elaborate on the company’s stake.
“He plants the seeds and waits for things to grow,” said Tomoaki Kawasaki, an analyst at Iwai Cosmo Holding Inc. in Tokyo. “Alibaba is a pretty good example.”