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Technology Stocks : Softbank Group Corp -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jonas1 who wrote (4722)	4/3/2000 1:23:00 PM
From: Edwin S. Fujinaka	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 6021

Microsoft's legal problems will also spill over to Tokyo and Softbank. That is irrational and unfortunate, but we should brace ourselves. Currently, here in the US, Schwab is quoting their "indication" of $760 bid and $810 asked but they seem to be pretty delayed. An interesting change has been made to the Divine Interventures IPO. I mention them here because they call themselves the first "Internet Zaibatsu" and I believe they are trying to copywrite that phrase. They were going to issue 50 million shares in their coming out at between $7 and $9/share, but that has been scaled back to 20 million shares (apparently at the same price range). They are issuing a lot of preferred class A and class B shares instead for "private placement". I think the current negative atmosphere around Softbank has affected their IPO. Also, their primary political ally, Mayor Daley of Chicago, is in the hospital (not as ill as Obuchi). DVIN's issuing of the preferred stock is the strategy that I suggested for Softbank. Anyway, the way the US Market accepts DVIN will be an indicator of how well any coming out of Softbank on the US Market will play. I think that DVIN has a strategy of attempting to get the "Investment Company Act of 1940" (name?) modified to suit their investment business model which is very similar to Softbank's. Whether they can succeed will be a political question. Chicago's Mayor Daley's Brother is heading up the Commerce Department in Washington DC. Any changes to the law could benefit Softbank and perhaps Yahoo. Yahoo is currently attempting to get an exemption from that Law and has the matter before the SEC right now. BTW, I'm glad that you did not interpret the Softbank "eating their children" notion to be my position on Softbank selling off parts of their investments. I agree that rolling over some of these investments into cash for new investments on a continuing basis is going to have to happen on a regular basis. One major problem is that some analysts could interpret any sale by Softbank to be a sign of lack of confidence in the future of the investment that happens to be sold. This is the unfortunate corollary to the idea that if Softbank (or CMGI or Microsoft, or Vulcan Venture or Warren Buffet <?> invests in a company, the stock usually goes up).