Leidi.com Rakuten April 13
When Tencent encountered a major shareholder selling shares, Alibaba also encountered a reduction in Softbank's holdings.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s regulatory filings show that SoftBank has sold about US$7.2 billion (about 49.5 billion) worth of Ali shares through prepaid forward contracts, which will eventually reduce SoftBank’s stake in Ali to only 3.8%. Softbank once held more than 30% of Alibaba's equity, which is the most proud investment case of Softbank founder Masayoshi Son.
Since 2022, with the plunge of global technology stocks and the depreciation of the yen, the investment income of the Vision Fund has deteriorated, especially the investment in Wework, the encryption start-up company FTX and other companies have encountered Waterloo. Sexual appeals are on the rise, and various assets under his umbrella have begun to be sold on a large scale.
SoftBank has increasingly used derivatives such as prepaid forward contracts to raise cash that can be paid immediately. These contracts do not amount to a formal sale of shares, as it retains the option to buy back shares at a later date. But SoftBank had previously settled such contracts early, giving up the option to keep the stake.
In 2022, in order to meet liquidity needs, SoftBank Group will sell 9% of Ali shares.
In February 2023, Ali issued an announcement stating that the shares of Ali held by Softbank had fallen below the 15% threshold required to nominate the company's directors, thus losing its seat on Ali's board of directors.
SoftBank is seeking to recover from a string of failed investments and unprecedented losses. "We are increasing our liquidity on hand through financing to strengthen our financial stability," SoftBank said.
At present, Sun Zhengyi, founder and CEO of Softbank Group, has reached a preliminary agreement on Arm's listing plan. Arm's IPO will take place as early as the fall of 2023 and is planned to be listed in the United States.
Arm is a British chip IP design company under Softbank Group. In 2016, SoftBank Group acquired Arm for $32 billion. SoftBank had planned to sell Arm to Nvidia, but the final sale was aborted due to regulatory opposition.
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