TOKYO, Japan — SoftBank Group wants to raise $7.3 billion through the sale of foreign-currency notes, the Japanese tech investor’s largest ever overseas debt offering. SoftBank announced on Thursday that it will sell eight bonds, half of which will be in dollars and the other half in euros, in its first offshore bond offering since 2018. Outside of Japan and the United States, the bonds will be marketed to global institutional investors. SoftBank said the funds will be used to repay debt as well as for “general company objectives,” such as “maintaining a liquidity position for redemption of outstanding notes due over the next two years and new investments.” In 2017, the company announced the creation of its first Vision Fund, which was valued at roughly $100 billion. Its Vision Fund 2 has increased its investment in artificial intelligence by doubling its stake to $40 billion. Masayoshi Son, chairman and CEO of SoftBank Group, has stated that his goal is to double the number of Vision Fund-backed firms to 500. SoftBank is the sole backer of Vision Fund 2. It plans to use the proceeds from the bond issue to fund new investments. Standard & Poor’s assigned the dual-currency bonds a “BB+” grade. They are offering a five-year dollar bond with a rate of 4.0 percent per year and a five-and-a-half-year euro bond with a rate of 2.875 percent per year, with an expected issuance date of July 6. “Investor demand was tremendous… more than double the amount of issuance,” SoftBank Chief Financial Officer Yoshimitsu Goto told Nikkei on Thursday./n
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