The shares of SoftBankGroup’s Japanese telecom business fell at the start of trading after Masayoshi Son raised 2.65 trillion yen ($23.6bn) in an initial public offering.
SoftBank, the new entity trading under ticker 9434 on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, declined 9.3 per cent to 1,360 yen at midday in Tokyo on Wednesday. Of the investors who bought the stock at the offering price of 1,500 yen, 90 per cent were individuals and the rest were funds and money managers.
SoftBank and its underwriters — Nomura Holdings, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Company, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Mizuho Financial Group and Goldman Sachs Group — stuck to its price for the offering instead of a range, even amid a Japan-wide network outage and a continuing global equities selloff.
Mr Son is selling a stake in his crown-jewel domestic telecoms business to fund further investments in global technology companies, a portfolio that already includes Uber Technologies and WeWork. The listing also comes at a time when Japan’s wireless industry has come under pressure from the government to reduce phone bills. The entry of e-commerce giant Rakuten is also raising the risks of a price war next year.
Including a greenshoe overallotment of about 160 million shares, SoftBank sold a total of roughly 1.76 billion shares.
“Once the levee broke at 1,500 yen there was nothing that was going to hold it up there,” said Andrew Jackson, head of Japanese equities at Soochow CSSD Capital Markets. “Looks like the majority of the greenshoe has been spent already.”
SoftBank is looking to tempt investors with a dividend payout ratio of about 85 per cent of net income. Based on net income in the latest fiscal year and the 1,500 price at offering, that would work out to a yield of almost 5 per cent.
“It’s disappointing,” said Hideyuki Sakai, who runs a technology company in Tokyo and bought 1,000 shares in the IPO. “I am holding the shares for a while, anticipating the high dividend payment.”
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Company%20profile
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Results
7pm: Wathba Stallions Cup – Handicap (PA) Dh70,000 (Dirt) 1,600m; Winner: RB Kings Bay, Abdul Aziz Al Balushi (jockey), Helal Al Alawi (trainer)
7.30pm: Maiden (PA) Dh 70,000 (D) 1,600m; Winner: AF Ensito, Fernando Jara, Mohamed Daggash
8pm: Maiden (PA) Dh70,000 (D) 1,400m; Winner: AF Sourouh, Tadhg O’Shea, Ernst Oertel
8.30pm: Maiden (PA) Dh70,000 (D) 1,800m; Winner: Baaher, Fabrice Veron, Eric Lemartinel
9pm: Maiden (PA) Dh70,000 (D) 2,000m; Winner: Mootahady, Antonio Fresu, Eric Lemartinel
9.30pm: Handicap (TB) Dh70,000 (D) 2,000m; Winner: Dubai Canal, Tadhg O’Shea, Satish Seemar
10pm: Al Ain Cup – Prestige (PA) Dh100,000 (D) 2,000m; Winner: Harrab, Bernardo Pinheiro, Majed Al Jahouri
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
Sustainable Development Goals
1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere
2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation
10. Reduce inequality within and among countries
11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its effects
14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development
15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss
16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels
17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development
