SoftBank moves to sell down its stake in Alibaba
FT News Briefing
Forhecz Topher
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 4 August 2022
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
SoftBank has raised as much as $22bn in cash from deals that would sharply reduce its stake in Alibaba over the coming years, Iran and western powers resume talks this week over the floundering 2015 nuclear accords, and as political polarisation reaches into the workplace companies must manage conflicts among employees while striving for sensitivity and diversity.
Mentioned in this podcast:
Softbank raises $22b in moves to sell down Alibaba stake
Iran to resume nuclear talks with discussion over EU proposals
Politics in the workplace:how should we deal with opposing views?
The FT News Briefing is produced by Fiona Symon, Sonja Hutson and Marc Filippino. The show’s editor is Jess Smith. Additional help by Peter Barber, Michael Lello, David da Silva and Gavin Kallmann. The show’s theme song is by Metaphor Music. Topher Forhecz is the FT’s executive producer. The FT’s global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The FT News Briefing is supported by Equinole, the UK's energy partner. |
| 0:06.3 | Learn more at equinole.co.uk |
| 0:09.8 | Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Thursday, August 4th, and this is your FT News Briefing. |
| 0:18.5 | The world's largest tech investor is backing away from Alibaba. |
| 0:23.1 | Diplomats from Iran and the West are looking to restart nuclear talks. |
| 0:27.3 | And many companies have been encouraging employees to |
| 0:30.1 | bring their whole selves to work. What a manager is now realizing |
| 0:35.4 | has some problematic aspects as well. We'll talk about the rise of political conflict in the |
| 0:41.4 | workplace. I'm Joanna Gao, in for Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day. |
| 0:47.7 | SoftBank |
| 0:52.4 | SoftBank is planning to dramatically reduce its stake in China's e-commerce giant Alibaba. |
| 0:58.7 | This would be a big move. The Japanese tech group was one of Alibaba's earliest investors. |
| 1:04.7 | The FT's Ryan McMurrow explains that SoftBank is doing this by raising $22 billion for something |
| 1:10.7 | called prepaid forward contracts. They're doing it in this very complicated manner where they're |
| 1:16.8 | essentially selling the shares now into this entity, but retaining the ability to buy back the shares |
| 1:23.9 | in two years' time if they want to. Masayoshi-san, the chairman of SoftBank, has been |
| 1:29.8 | side-by-side with Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba over the past two decades since he started the |
| 1:36.1 | company. So it's definitely a big deal that they're now selling down their stake. And if all |
| 1:41.5 | these shares roll over, they could be down to about 10 percent. |
| 1:45.7 | Why is SoftBank doing this? Did something happen to the relationship between Sun and Ma? |
| 1:50.9 | No, it's more about the just turmoil in the markets in SoftBank last year. Their last |
| 1:58.8 | fiscal year had a huge $27 billion loss in their vision fund. And so they're just trying to |
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