Softbank Completes Acquisition of U.S. Mobile Career Sprint

Tokyo, July 11 (Jiji Press)--Japan's Softbank Corp. <9984> said Thursday it has finished procedures for its 21.6-billion-dollar acquisition of Sprint Nextel Corp., the third-biggest mobile phone carrier in the United States. The Softbank group's global mobile phone business revenue is now almost the third largest in the world. Through the new U.S. unit, which was renamed Sprint Communications Inc. following the acquisition, Softbank will launch mobile phone operations in the United States with the aim of catching up with the country's leading carrier Verizon Communications Inc. and second-ranking AT&T Inc. Sprint has some 55 million subscribers, half the levels at Verizon and AT&T. Of the total investment, Softbank acquired an equity stake of 78 pct in Sprint for 16.6 billion dollars and spent 5 billion dollars to strengthen the financial health of the Overland Park, Kansas-based company. Sprint plans 8 billion dollars of capital spending each in 2013 and 2014 to expand its next-generation Long-Term Evolution high-speed communications system while utilizing the network of U.S. wireless broadband service provider Clearwire Corp., which has become a subsidiary of Sprint recently. Softbank's interest-bearing debt swelled to some 3.86 trillion yen from 2.1 trillion yen at the end of March, following the acquisition of Sprint. Meanwhile, Sprint and Clearwire had interest-bearing debt worth 2.43 trillion yen and 430 billion yen, respectively, at the end of last December. How to reduce the huge debts will be an important management issue for Softbank. END