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US/Japan: Is Sprint for sale?

By  |  February 9, 2017

Sprint’s Tokyo-based parent company is willing to sell the Kansas-based wireless company, but it also may be up for buying T-Mobile or deal with other companies, its chief executive said Wednesday.

The comments came from Masayoshi Son, chairman of Sprint and CEO of SoftBank that owns more than 80 percent of Sprint’s shares. SoftBank bought Sprint in 2013 and Son had hoped in 2014 to buy T-Mobile as well but was turned away by US regulators.

“Now, we may buy, we may sell, maybe simple merger,” Son said, according to an interpreter’s version of his remarks during SoftBank’s quarterly meeting with analysts and investors in Tokyo.

Son acknowledged his 2014 effort to buy T-Mobile as well as his failed attempts to sell Sprint when a T-Mobile deal was blocked.

“Nobody’s going to buy it,” Son said Wednesday of Sprint and its weak financial and competitive position in 2014. “So we had no choice but we had to turn it around by itself.”

Full Content: Financial Times

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