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SoftBank <9984.T>
holds stakes in both companies and its chief, billionaire
businessman Masayoshi Son, earlier in December said he would
invest $50 billion in the United States and create 50,000 jobs.
Sprint in January said it had cut 2,500 jobs as part of its plan
to cut $2.5 billion in costs. On Wednesday it said it would
create 5,000 jobs in areas including sales and customer care by
the end of its fiscal year ending in March 2018.
Sprint spokesman Dave Tovar said the jobs were part of the
pledge made by Son but would be funded by Sprint.
SoftBank and OneWeb had announced on Dec. 19 that the Japanese
company was leading a $1.2 billion funding round.
OneWeb plans to use the funds to build a plant in Florida to
produce low-cost satellites, creating almost 3,000 jobs at the
company and its suppliers.
SoftBank described its $1 billion share of the funding as the
first tranche of the $50 billion promised by Son in a meeting
with Trump.
It is not clear whether the $50 billion SoftBank investment
would be part of a $100 billion tech investment fund that the
head of SoftBank and Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund had
announced earlier in the year.
"I was just called by the head people at Sprint and they are
going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States, they
are taking them from other countries," Trump told reporters
outside his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
"And also OneWeb, a new company, is going to be hiring 3,000
people. So that's very exciting," he added.
Shares of Sprint Corp, which is 82 percent owned by SoftBank,
were barely changed in after-hours trading.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Additional reporting by Susan
Heavey and Heather Somerville; Writing by Ayesha Rascoe and
Peter Henderson; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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