SoftBank to raise $4.1 billion in retail bond issuance

By Anton Bridge

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese technology investment group SoftBank Group plans to raise 600 billion yen ($4.10 billion) by issuing bonds to retail investors, it said in a filing on Monday.

It is SoftBank's largest ever bond issuance and the proceeds will be used to redeem existing bonds and to cover a portion of the outstanding payment on the acquisition of shares of chip designer Arm from its Vision Fund investment vehicle in August 2023, a SoftBank spokesperson said.

SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son is known to take on debt to fund investments and last week SoftBank led a $40 billion funding round in ChatGPT operator OpenAI, of which SoftBank would contribute $30 billion.

The bonds are set to mature in May 2030 and will yield between 3% and 3.6%, with the exact rate to be set on April 18.

The group has some 7 trillion yen ($47.83 billion) in outstanding bonds, LSEG data shows. It aims to keep the total value of its loans at a ratio of under 25% of the group's total assets. At the end of December 2024, this ratio stood at 12.9%.

($1 = 146.3500 yen)

(Reporting by Anton Bridge and Miho Uranaka, Editing by Louise Heavens)

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