Sprint Shares Surge After Trump Announces $50B SoftBank Investment

Donald Trump and Son told the world in NY on Tuesday that the Japanese billionaire will create jobs equivalent to three times those at Facebook Inc.

“We were talking about it, and then I said I’d like to celebrate his presidential job”, Son said during an impromptu press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower, in apparent reference to Trump’s vow of deregulation.

Trump made the announcement on Twitter as he met with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son in NY, later striding into the lobby of Trump Tower to brief reporters in person. “Masa said he would never do this had we [Trump] not won the election!”

The paper listed the figures US$50 billion and US$7 billion and said “generate 50,000 new jobs and 50,000 new jobs over the next four years”.

Son said that he was expecting regulatory policies of the government to change under the presidency of Trump because he would be deregulating many things.

Aside from fueling rumors of job creation and technology growth, the joint Trump – Masayashi announcement has also led to further speculation that telecommunications carrier Sprint – which is 82 percent SoftBank-owned – might reconsider a potential merger with T-Mobile US, its closest competitor. Following the announcement, shares of Sprint Corp surged almost 4 percent as of mid-afternoon.

It’s unclear exactly where the money will go or how much of it is actually from SoftBank itself. Trump lost no time claiming he had saved those positions, even though the company would be shifting more than 1,000 jobs from that factory and another IN plant to Mexico. “Because he said he would do a lot of deregulation, I said, “This is great, the US will become great again”.

I was watching CNN tonight, and saw Richard Quest talk about how we all have to give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt, in terms of believing his claim that he personally got a Japanese telecom giant, SoftBank, to promise to invest $50 billion into the US.

The announcement on Tuesday appeared to be part of a previous commitment announced in October.

“We will announce the details of any plans following the completion of direct discussions between our leadership and the relevant USA officials”, the statement said. For Son to pony up the money to meet his end of the SoftBank Vision Fund, he’d put the mothership’s debt rating in jeopardy. SoftBank paid more than $20 billion to take control of Sprint (S) in 2012, but regulators blocked his attempt to merge the struggling mobile carrier with T-Mobile (TMUS) in 2014.

For Mr. Son, the meeting with Trump represents a significant step forward for his designs on the American market. SoftBank bought Britain’s ARM Holdings in a record $32 billion deal less than a month after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union.