Deals

SoftBank's Audacious CEO Has Hard Choices to Make on Sprint

T-Mobile talks end as sides unable to agree on control
Without a combination, Chairman Son faces limited options

Bloomberg Intelligence’s Anthea Lai talks about SoftBank’s decision to ended talks to combine Sprint with T-Mobile.(Source: Bloomberg)

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By Pavel Alpeyev and Scott Moritz

November 5, 2017 at 10:01 PM UTC

Updated on

November 6, 2017 at 1:50 AM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

Masayoshi Son, celebrated Japanese dealmaker, just negotiated himself into a corner.

Son’s SoftBank Group Corp. ended talks Saturday to combine its Sprint Corp. with T-Mobile US Inc., a merger that would have united the third- and fourth-largest wireless operators in the U.S. In the end, the 60-year-old billionaire balked at the idea of giving up control over the company he sees as central to his vision of the future.