Japan’s Softbank Group has announced plans to set up three venture capital funds for internet-related investments, two in the US and another in Japan, which will be worth a combined $1.9bn. One of the US funds, worth about $1.2bn, will mainly focus on major high-tech companies engaged in internet-related business, a Softbank statement said, with half of the money coming from Softbank and the rest from institutional investors.
The second US fund, worth $600m, will focus on relatively small private companies, while the $100m Japanese fund will go towards the previously-announced creation of the Nasdaq-Japan stock market in conjunction with the National Association of Securities Dealers (CI No 3,683).
The Softbank group has invested in a number of key internet-related firms in the past, including Yahoo! Inc and E*Trade Group Inc, at an early stage of their development and made large, but still unrealized, profits when they went public. Softbank President Masayoshi Son said he aims to establish an internet zaibatsu by holding stakes in companies owning key infrastructure on the internet.
In another development, which was announced at the same time as the new funds, Softbank said it is teaming up with Japan’s top four toy makers to sell toys over the internet beginning in November. The four companies, Bandai Co, Epoch Co, Tomy Co and Takara Co, have a combined 65% share of the domestic toy market.
