SoftBank chairman Masayoshi Son reportedly considered taking the company private

Billionaire Masayoshi Son considered a management buyout of Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. earlier this year and entered talks with an overseas partner, sources told Bloomberg News.

Son had talks with at least one lender before scrapping the plan at least three months ago when he couldn’t agree with the overseas partner on financing conditions, the sources said, asking not to be identified because they aren’t authorized to speak on the matter. While it was the top possible deal earlier this year, Son is no longer considering using that partner, the sources said without elaborating.

Mounting debt at the company and losses at Overland Park-based Sprint Corp. have driven SoftBank’s market value down to about $65 billion, or less than the stakes it holds in companies such as Alibaba Group Holding and Yahoo Japan. A deal excluding Son’s 19.3 percent stake would be the biggest management buyout ever, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“The fact that Son decided to keep being listed means he might be regaining confidence in future performance,” said Tomoaki Kawasaki, an analyst at Iwai Cosmo Securities Co. “It may take a little time, but investors are waiting for the recovery of business in the U.S.”

Son has a reputation for considering extreme deals, including those involving companies larger than SoftBank. Even if he decided to proceed, there is no certainty a deal could be completed, another person said.

Son is the biggest shareholder in SoftBank, which owns more than 80 percent among other things. The value of SoftBank’s publicly traded shares excluding that stake is about $52 billion.

Applying last year’s average premium of about 30 percent in deals targeting Japanese companies, buying out the rest of the company would cost about $68 billion. That would be greater than the total for listed companies globally announced in the past two years, and it also would be more than double the total of all such deals in Japan since 1999.

Since scrapping the plan, SoftBank has announced a $993 million share buyback and boosted its stake in Sprint to about 82 percent.

Hiroe Kotera, a spokeswoman for SoftBank in Tokyo, declined to comment.

This story was originally published September 11, 2015 at 11:52 AM with the headline "SoftBank chairman Masayoshi Son reportedly considered taking the company private."