Hedge fund Tiger Global takes $1 billion stake in Softbank - source

Hedge fund Tiger Global takes $1 billion stake in Japan's Softbank Group

US hedge fund Tiger Global has built a stake worth more than $1 billion in Japan's Softbank Group which it considers to be under-valued, a source with direct knowledge of the matter said on Wednesday.

Tiger, which runs around $22 billion in assets, told investors in a letter that tech and telecoms conglomerate Softbank's stock price had not increased over the last five years, even though its holding in Chinese online giant Alibaba had added more than $90 billion in value, the source said.

Softbank's purchase of investment group Fortress and the launch of its $100 billion Vision Fund to find and grow the world's next leading tech companies also had the potential to provide higher returns to shareholders, the letter said.

The news of Tiger's stake build, which was earlier reported by the Financial Times, comes a day after Softbank announced it had raised its stake in Yahoo Japan by buying $2 billion worth of stock from U.S. firm Altaba.

Softbank has a market capitalisation of just under $87 billion, Thomson Reuters data shows.