SoftBank is still writing big checks

This almost seems like the plot of the James Bond story Casino Royale.

Basically, SoftBank has taken the money of some very unsavory characters (people who are literally willing to cut your body into little pieces) promising big gains and has lost a significant chunk of it.

Now, like Le Chiffre, they are desperately trying to gamble big, hoping that they can make up the lost money by high risk strategies.

The obvious point is that the 'writing big checks' aligns with what detractors have starting pointing is the problem with Softbank. Take the first example given in the article, Paytm - Softbank are already investors in Paytm, so by inflating a new round of funding they can mark up their previous investment as a profit. Not to mention all weird crossed up fact that Softbank were an investor in Alibaba who are the largest share holder of Paytm. It's all a bit like marking your own homework.

I am sorry, what is the problem here? Their Vision Fund is for funding risky ventures with the hope one unicorn pays off the cost of all the others and more. Of course they won't stop. The WeWork exercise might have been about testing the waters of hacking people's perception instead of fundamental analysis and they were riding high for quite a while, so it almost worked for them.

The lesson for any potential employee is to stay far away from any company funded by SoftBank.

The inflated value may help the CEO get a big payout (like WeWork) or help the company raise lots of capital (like Uber & Paytm).

However, you are probably joining a company with an unrealistic valuation like Uber, WeWork, Wag or Paytm. If you have options, you will always be underwater. If you have RSUs, they may never appreciate.

Softbank is not trying to be your local Savings and Loan. They want to be something entirely different. Maybe that's a good idea, maybe it's a bad idea. But they intend to find out.

So why does anyone think they will throw in the towel so long as they have even 1 backer or yen left?!

They'll make it work.

Worked with the SB guys briefly and my take on it was that they're willing to stack the chips higher than anyone else. And if gravity gets in the way they'll keep stacking until gravity no longer applies

Despite the mockery and we work drama I reckon their all or nothing strategy is sound. If this project fails it'll probably be concurrent with a SV collapse in which case does it even matter?

If you're gonna take risks that involve catastrophic failure anyway you might as well bet big on upside

If you view SoftBank as a way for Saudi oil money to move out of the country and into public markets at a ~30% discount it takes on a whole new perspective.

These people are very clever scammers, I started out with an "Oscar Ford" telling that my initial investment of $US250 will be matched by him. Less than one week later after he had manipulated the figures in my account to look like i'm winning he said that if i put in $5000 i will get a contract to the effect of being 30% insured, and because he never looses and invests in small amounts my $5000 will be safe. Plus i could withdraw that money at any time I choose with no issues. A few days later after he had my account reflecting a further $10,000 in winnings, I was encouraged to put another $5000 towards anther investment. This time my money is 100% insured and again i could withdraw at any time. My account got to around $26,000 in about 2 weeks and i needed to withdraw as we had agreed that I needed the $10,000 at a particular date. At this time i stopped hearing from him because he had tried to convince me that making a withdrawal takes away the benefit of insurance etc. I insisted because i needed the money. My account went up again to over $30,000. I started to contact support in order to make my withdrawal. After a while they became very rude, the person i was trying to plead with to give Oscar my message told me that i was giving him attitude. then as i continued to call, Mr Oscar Ford called me back to say he had just came out of an i think 9 hrs meeting and was fired because he had lost a client's $3000,000. It was a total made up story and I knew it. Before the conversation, my account was over $30,000. By the end of the conversation when i checked again it was suddenly down to $1.00. This is a well laid out scam of a company and my hope here is to help others to not be caught up in their lies like I did.thanks to globalrefundsint dot com for the total recovery of my asset. When you ask to withdraw then they will make you fill out forms confirming that you give them the money hence there is no argument.

Lookup “central bank credit guidance”.

Japanese central bankers figured out a way of creating money for purposes that are good for society. Like AI, Quantum computing or bio technology and any other hyped up stuff you see on internet.

There were many bad consequences in the past because of money created that way.

With the way SoftBank is giving away money, it looks like “smart credit guidance” is still happening with out any public policy or public awareness.

> The Vision Fund reported an operating loss of $8.9 billion in October related to WeWork and Uber. The losses are especially concerning because of the financial structure of the fund, 40% of which takes the form of preferred stock that promises investors 7% per year. That interest works out to as much as $2.8 billion annually.

I'm not a believer of the Vision Fund (but it's just a subjective opinion - I'm a pessimist).

> When SoftBank announced that it expected to raise more than $100 billion for Vision Fund 2 in July, the firm touted corporate backers Microsoft, Amazon, Foxconn and several financial institutions. But it only mentioned one sovereign wealth fund, from the government of Kazakhstan, which has roughly $60 billion in assets - a far cry from the hundreds of billions controlled by PIF and Mubadala.

I watched a few documentaries about Kazakhstan last year (for no particular reason - I was just randomly watching TV) and (technically) it seems to be a nice country which has a nice mix of many climates (deserts, mountains, plains - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakhstan ) and has as well many natural resources (oil, gas, uranium, metals) and is currently trying very hard to develop.

I remember that at that time I mentally wished them well, but when I read now about their involvement in the Vision Fund I immediately thought "hopefully they didn't bet too much on it"... .

Cheques.

Although, they should be writing checks into the operations of WeWork.

Edit: Oh, Saudi Arabia and UAE sovereign wealth funds have checked out of the next fund.