Question

How has softbank affected the financial market or environment

Answer 1

• Soft Bank Group Corp launched $100bn Vision Fund by investing in different amounts of capitals into a wide range of technology startups. This has changed the structure of financial market in 2018.
• Soft Bank has in particular reshaped the Venture Capital Industry. The number of recipients who has received investment from this institution are plenty, WeWork, Uber Technologies, Cruise Automation, Flipkart etc.
• Softbank’s investment strategy became a critique when the founder Masayoshi Son had lost $130mm of his personal fortune on a bitcoin investment and also invested €900m of SoftBank funds into Wirecard which is a German based payments group fighting an accounting scandal
• When Softbank gained more cash from $23.5bn listing of mobile unit and also corporate’s bond sale to retail investors, Softbank also launched $5.5bn buy back of shares from Uber’s Blockbuster IPO
• Soft Bank was rated low by Moody’s and S&P because of company’s $4.5bn bond issuance to Japan’s retail investors
• In early 2018, the shares fell further when US Department of Justice’s anti-trust staff opposed to a merger between T-Mobile and mobile carrier Sprint
• The biggest confusion prevailed when Softbank decided to sell a larger part of its Uber stake within a 180 day lock period, it was unclear whether they would be able to return money to shareholders
• Softbank’s vision fund came to be known as Revolutionary period in Venture Capital Industry based in Japan