TOKYO -- The price for the initial public offering of SoftBank Group Corp.'s Japanese mobile subsidiary was set Monday at $13 a share.
The Dec. 19 IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange is expected to raise more than $18 billion and is likely to be one of the world's biggest share offerings, rivaling that of China's Alibaba Group, which went public in 2014. Facebook raised $16 billion when it went public in 2012.
The IPO will come on the heels of a widespread service failure last week, which the company blamed on a software problem. It had initially cited mechanical problems.
How many people were affected remains under investigation, SoftBank said, but millions of people are signed on to the service in Japan. Some said they could not text important messages or make payments with their cellphones, highlighting the country's dependence on mobile services.
SoftBank apologized for the problems, saying in a statement that "We take this matter extremely seriously and will do our utmost to take all measures possible to prevent a recurrence."
The IPO price announced Monday was the same as the preliminary price announced last month. The company is listing 1.6 billion shares.
Business on 12/11/2018