A little less than an hour ago, Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs reported that SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son was headed to a meeting with President-elect Trump…
Masayoshi Son, Japanese billionaire who is CEO of SoftBank Corp. (which owns Sprint in the US), just walked into Trump Tower for a meeting.
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) December 6, 2016
…a meeting that apparently resulted in a commitment for the bank to invest $50 billion in the U.S.:
Masa (SoftBank) of Japan has agreed to invest $50 billion in the U.S. toward businesses and 50,000 new jobs….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2016
Masa said he would never do this had we (Trump) not won the election!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2016
However, it’s not clear if this is anything new:
https://twitter.com/TonyRomm/status/806214899663798278
From Bloomberg:
The Japanese billionaire is in the process of raising a $100 billion investment fund and is interested in putting some of the money into the U.S., the person said. Son made his fortune from investments in Japan and China, but has had a mixed record in the U.S. SoftBank bought control of Sprint in 2013 only to see it lose ground to rivals including T-Mobile US Inc. Son’s attempt to engineer a merger between the No. 3 and No. 4 wireless players was rebuffed by the Obama administration, but a new government may have a different take on communications policy.
And there is already some speculation that Masayoshi Son, who owns Sprint, is trying to curry favor for the proposed merger of Sprint with T-Mobile:
Softbank CEO and Trump met today in NYC. What Softbank wants: POTUS support for T-Mobile/Sprint merger https://t.co/pOPhJdv4ef https://t.co/cQ5tr1McJR
— Rebecca Buck (@RebeccaBuck) December 6, 2016
https://twitter.com/joshgreenman/status/806215602901839872
Or maybe it’s for … robots?
SoftBank’s big US push right now: Robotshttps://t.co/JV0WQkpmBC https://t.co/xiw8My9j48
— Mike Murphy (@mcwm) December 6, 2016
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