TOKYO-- SoftBank Corp. called off plans to reshuffle its
Japanese assets, canceling a move that would have resulted in an
extra Yen450 billion ($4.4 billion) in the Internet and telecom
group's war chest for acquisitions.
SoftBank said Monday that it scrapped plans to sell mobile
provider eAccess Ltd. to its 42%-owned subsidiary Yahoo Japan Corp.
SoftBank and Yahoo Japan said it made sense for the search engine
to focus on services and leave SoftBank and its telecom
subsidiaries to focus on infrastructure. Yahoo Japan will still
launch a new service to be called "Y! mobile" to chase new users on
mobile networks.
Minority shareholders of Yahoo Japan had said they were worried
that through the deal, SoftBank was using Yahoo Japan--a listed
entity--to fund acquisitions that didn't benefit the search portal.
SoftBank last year paid $22 billion to take control of U.S. carrier
Sprint Corp. and people familiar with the matter say it is also
eyeing a bid for smaller U.S. carrier T-Mobile US Inc.
Yahoo Japan's share price has fallen 25% since it announced the
eAccess deal in March and 30% since the start of the year.
The announcement comes shortly after Chinese e-commerce giant
Alibaba Group Holding Inc. filed its plans to go public, valuing
itself at more than $100 billion, and giving SoftBank access to a
wealth of collateral to finance deals. SoftBank has a 34.4% stake
in Alibaba.
Yahoo Japan wasn't financing SoftBank's acquisitions,
representatives of both companies said. Yahoo Japan's decision to
scrap the eAccess deal had nothing to do with the share price
decline or shareholder pressure, a spokeswoman said.
In March, Yahoo Japan said it needed to be a carrier in its own
right to offer users competitive price plans for mobile devices,
including wearables. That would help it win new users who would
turn more frequently to Yahoo Japan's marketplace and auction sites
and boost its e-commerce and online advertising businesses, it
said. But SoftBank would have continued to retain control of
eAccess's base stations and research and development.
Megumi Fujikawa contributed to this article.
Write to Mayumi Negishi at mayumi.negishi@wsj.com
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