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Softbank kind of reminds me of the Icelandic banks in the last bubble, in that in both cases I was wondering how they managed to get all the money they had.

Just before it all went off that time, these icelandic banks were buying up everything in sight, and I was thinking "where are these banks from a small country getting this kind of money"

Softbank seems similar, in that the scale of its funds is absolutely massive for a single company (vision fund one at $100b and suggestions of a second $100b vision fund in the offing). If there's a lot of fancy debt going on, it's the kind of that seems like it could blow up in spectacular fashion (as the icelandic banks did last time)




Saudi Arabia and MBS are reported to have invested heavily in SoftBank, especially the vision fund.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/05/business/softbank-son-sau...


Japan is the third-biggest economy on the planet, after US and China. Their shopping spree sounds more reasonable than the Icelandic one.


That and Softbank, at least from my limited visibility seems to throw money at a lot of startup like ventures in terms of the risk reward.

Maybe overall they're far more grounded than I see but I swear I only hear about them publicly when they're taking some risky chances that most probabbly won't pay off...

If they're borrowing I wonder who goes down with them?




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