SoftBank's Masayoshi Son Has a $7.7 Billion Uber Ticket to Ride
The Vision Fund’s canny purchase of 200 million shares from Travis Kalanick and others offers a cushion if there’s a post-IPO price slump.
SoftBank's billionaire founder has some Uber insurance.
Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/BloombergThe SoftBank Vision Fund paid about $7.7 billion for its 16.3 percent stake in Uber Technologies Inc. A more important number is what Uber’s bankers can turn that into when the ride-sharing company IPOs on the New York Stock Exchange.
Investors in the Vision Fund, and in Masayoshi Son’s listed SoftBank Group Corp., are rightly expecting a windfall. This will be the first big public exit for the $100 billion SoftBank-controlled fund. That also makes it the first chance for the Japanese billionaire to take a victory lap and put his naysayers back in their box.