“Softbank Corp. agreed to buy a stake of about 70 percent in Sprint Nextel Corp. for $20.1 billion as Japan’s third-biggest mobile-phone operator seeks growth overseas amid a declining local market,” Mariko Yasu and Shunichi Ozasa report for Bloomberg.
“Softbank will pay $12.1 billion to Sprint shareholders and the deal includes $8 billion of new capital, according to a statement today,” Yasu and Ozasa report. “The deal would be the biggest publicly announced outbound acquisition by a Japanese company since at least 2000, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.”
Yasu and Ozasa report, “Entering the U.S. allows billionaire Masayoshi Son, Softbank’s president, to participate in a market that’s still growing in contrast to Japan, where handset shipments tumbled 27 percent during the past five years. Sprint can fund a faster expansion of its 4G wireless network, pay down debt or make more acquisitions aimed at challenging bigger competitors Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc… The combined entity of Sprint and Softbank will create the world’s third-largest mobile-phone services provider by revenue, Son said. Softbank group will have 96 million users after the transaction, he said.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related article:
Japan’s Softbank in advanced talks to acquire Sprint Nextel for $13 billion, sources say – October 11, 2012
Good, my post iPhone Sprint acquisition pays off.
Maybe this will someday help Siri on my iPhone 4S suck less in Chicago.