 "Donald Trump, Masayoshi Son")
The brash and outspoken founder of SoftBank, Masayoshi Son, has long been known for his outsize ambitions, from taking on the United States’ biggest telephone companies to creating a $100 billion fund for technology deals.
On Tuesday, Son, a Japanese mogul, struck another big pledge after meeting with President-elect Donald J Trump: to invest $50 billion in the United States, a move that he said would create some 50,000 jobs.
But the $50 billion investment pledge is not an entirely new initiative that SoftBank is undertaking. Instead, the money is projected to come from the Japanese company’s previously announced Vision fund, a $100 billion vehicle for investing in technology companies worldwide.
The fund — which includes Saudi Arabia, a target of Trump’s ire during the presidential campaign, as a key partner — was always expected to strike a significant portion of its deals in the United States.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Son said the new jobs would come from investing in American start-ups. Trump later declared on Twitter, “Masa said he would never do this had we (Trump) not won the election!”
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Son’s visit to Trump Tower in Manhattan on Tuesday was the latest outreach by global business leaders to an incoming president seen as friendlier to corporate interests. On Friday, the Trump transition team announced the formation of a business advisory group, led by Stephen A Schwarzman, the chief executive of the private equity behemoth the Blackstone Group, that would consult monthly with the Trump White House.
The advisory group was noticeably shy of technology names; Son is perhaps the most prominent tech executive so far to have met with the president-elect.
Although it has its headquarters in Japan, SoftBank has deep roots in the United States. It is the majority owner of the wireless operator Sprint, which two years ago unsuccessfully pursued a takeover bid for T-Mobile. That effort was effectively blocked by the Obama administration on antitrust grounds.
Son was not expected to discuss specific issues with Trump during their meeting, including the prospects of renewing a Sprint bid for its rival, according to a person briefed on the matter. Shares of Sprint and T-Mobile briefly rose Tuesday afternoon, before giving up their gains.
Beyond what Trump and Son said, “we aren’t able to say more,” a SoftBank spokesman in Tokyo, Matthew Nicholson, said.
“I just came to celebrate his new job,” Son, 59, told reporters at Trump Tower. “I said: ‘This is great. The US will become great again.’ “
Such bold talk is customary from the American-educated Son, who has built one of Japan’s biggest personal fortunes through sometimes brash deal-making. SoftBank, which began life as a software distributor, became one of Japan’s biggest phone service companies through shrewd negotiations that gave the company early exclusive rights to the iPhone. It has since become a global empire with stakes in the likes of Sprint and China’s Alibaba Group and in a welter of start-ups in the United States and abroad.
Earlier this year, Son struck a $32 billion takeover of ARM Holdings, a British chip designer whose products sit at the heart of devices like the iPhone.
Like the president-elect, Son has been known for sometimes impolitic remarks. As the SoftBank chief sought to compete against Verizon and AT&T with his investment in Sprint, he compared the quality of American wireless service to the air quality of Beijing. And he threatened to set himself on fire in the offices of Japan’s telecommunications regulator on at least one occasion.
In speaking with reporters alongside Trump on Tuesday, Son clutched what appeared to be a presentation from the meeting. One page featured the logos of both SoftBank and Foxconn, the Taiwanese manufacturing giant that makes parts for the iPhone. On the page - and circled - was the text committing to investing $50 billion in the United States and generating 50,000 jobs over the next four years.
© 2016 The New York Times News Service
