SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son wants to use his company's 34% stake in soon-to-be-public Alibaba, 2013 acquisition of Sprint, and bid to buy T-Mobile to rewrite America's Internet future.
By Erik Heinrich
FORTUNE -- Could Japan's SoftBank and China's Alibaba be the one-two punch that knocks leading U.S. mobile and e-commerce companies off their game?
When the online retail juggernaut Alibaba lists in New York -- perhaps as early as next month in what is expected to be the largest market debut ever by a technology company, surpassing Facebook's $16-billion I.P.O. -- SoftBank will have 34 percent stake.
Much has been made about the 40 percent ownership stake that Yahoo (YHOO) must sell when Alibaba goes public, and for good reason: The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company's financial performance has long been pinned to its piece of the fast-growing Chinese company, which could be worth an estimated $10 billion. Without it, the company must find its own growth.
But SoftBank has no plans to cash in its stake. That is perhaps a little surprising, given that the company's billionaire chief executive, Masayoshi Son, has piled on about $90 billion in debt resulting from a very aggressive acquisition spree. The cheerful and diminutive Son, described by some as Asia's Warren Buffet, is considered to be a crafty businessman with a very ambitious vision for the future of the global Internet and his company's place in it.
"What makes us fundamentally different from other companies is that our background is in the Internet, not simply telecom operations," Son wrote in SoftBank's annual report. "The SoftBank Group's goal is to become the global No. 1 in mobile Internet. Our vision for the Group is to enable people around the world to lead enriched lifestyles by enjoying a diverse spectrum of services and content, such as music, video, e-commerce, and financial settlements."
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