Billionaire Masayoshi Son's 300-year business plan for SoftBank Corp. sees no pause in acquisitions that saw him splurge $51 billion in five years. Higher interest rates in the U.S. and Japan may put the brakes on his debt-fueled ambitions.
SoftBank is Japan's biggest corporate bond issuer for the second year, raising ¥1.52 trillion to fund purchases including U.S. wireless carrier Sprint Corp. and game maker Supercell Oy. The company paid ¥271.5 billion in interest last fiscal year, more than it made in the past three quarters, according to its earnings data.
Son will have to balance future purchases with the increasing cost of servicing SoftBank's record ¥9.4 trillion debt pile, as the U.S. Federal Reserve ends its bond buying program this month and analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expect Japan's benchmark yield to almost double by the end of 2015.