Vodafone Group Plc’s Japanese mobile-phone unit will have a new owner. Softbank Corp., Japan’s second- largest Internet access provider, has agreed to buy Vodafone out for $15.4 billion. Softbank will gain 15 million customers through this deal, which will give the Japanese firm a network to compete against NTT DoCoMo Inc. and KDDI Corp. in an $73-billion mobile phone market, where customers are tapping online services such as video downloads and auctions. Softbank may borrow as much as two-third of the deal size to fund the purchase, the company founder Masayoshi Son told a press conference in Tokyo today. The deal will be Asia’s biggest leveraged buyout yet. Son is currently working on his TV Bank project, which is slated to be the Google for video content.
Related:
Vodafone To Sell Japanese Operations To Softbank
Masayoshi Son Plans Global Rollout Of His Video Service TV Bank
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