SoftBank Says Considering Investment in Uber but No Final Agreement Reached

Japan's SoftBank Group Corp said on Tuesday it was considering investing in Uber Technologies Inc but there was no final agreement at this stage.

"If conditions on share price and a minimum of shares are not satisfactory for the SoftBank Group side, there is a possibility the SoftBank Group may not make an investment," it said in a statement.

Uber said this week that a planned deal with SoftBank and Dragoneer Investment Group was moving forward. The investment could be worth up to $10 billion (roughly Rs. 65,336 crores), two people familiar with the matter have said..

SoftBank and Dragoneer are leading a consortium that plans to invest $1 billion (roughly Rs. 6,533 crores) to $1.25 billion (roughly Rs. 8,167 crores) in Uber, the mostly highly valued venture-backed company in the world, along with a purchase of up to 17 percent of existing shares in a secondary transaction.

Progress in the negotiations came after venture capital firm Benchmark, an early investor with a board seat in the ride-services company, and former Chief Executive Travis Kalanick struck a peace deal, reaching agreement over terms of the planned SoftBank investment.

The Japanese tech and telecoms firm has become a prolific investor in ride sharing firms such China's Didi and India's Ola as it works to achieve SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son's vision of a future driven by artificial intelligence and interconnected devices.

© Thomson Reuters 2017