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Trump Again Tries To Pass Off New Sprint Jobs As His Own Deal (It’s Not)

Trump Again Tries To Pass Off New Sprint Jobs As His Own Deal (It’s Not)

PALM BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday said telecommunications group Sprint Corp and a U.S. satellite company OneWeb will bring 8,000 jobs to the United States, and the companies said the positions were part of a previously disclosed pledge by Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp.

SoftBank holds stakes in both companies and its chief, billionaire businessman Masayoshi Son, earlier in December said he would invest $50 billion in the United States and create 50,000 jobs.

Sprint in January said it had cut 2,500 jobs as part of its plan to cut $2.5 billion in costs. On Wednesday it said it would create 5,000 jobs in areas including sales and customer care by the end of its fiscal year ending in March 2018.

Sprint spokesman Dave Tovar said the jobs were part of the pledge made by Son but would be funded by Sprint.

SoftBank and OneWeb had announced on Dec. 19 that the Japanese company was leading a $1.2 billion funding round.

OneWeb plans to use the funds to build a plant in Florida to produce low-cost satellites, creating almost 3,000 jobs at the company and its suppliers.

SoftBank described its $1 billion share of the funding as the first tranche of the $50 billion promised by Son in a meeting with Trump.

It is not clear whether the $50 billion SoftBank investment would be part of a $100 billion tech investment fund that the head of SoftBank and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund had announced earlier in the year.

“I was just called by the head people at Sprint and they are going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States, they are taking them from other countries,” Trump told reporters outside his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

“And also OneWeb, a new company, is going to be hiring 3,000 people. So that’s very exciting,” he added.

Shares of Sprint Corp, which is 82 percent owned by SoftBank, were barely changed in after-hours trading.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Heather Somerville; Writing by Ayesha Rascoe and Peter Henderson; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

IMAGE: Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at his Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, March 8, 2016.  REUTERS/Joe Skipper/File Photo

SoftBank Already Committed To Large-Scale U.S. Investment Before Election

SoftBank Already Committed To Large-Scale U.S. Investment Before Election

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The head of Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp, which in October set up a $100 billion fund for technology investments, said on Tuesday he would invest $50 billion in U.S. businesses, a move President-elect Donald Trump claimed was a direct result of his election win.

The investment, which could create 50,000 new U.S. jobs, revived speculation on Wall Street that U.S. telecommunications giant Sprint Corp, 82-percent-owned by SoftBank, might rekinkdle merger talks with T-Mobile US Inc that died under pressure from U.S. regulators.

Trump’s moves since the election to engage with individual companies, while turning his back on broader, years-in-the-works trade deals, show that the President-elect is leaning on the deal-making skills he honed in the boardroom. Trump campaigned against the overregulation of business and is expected to be more open to mergers than President Barack Obama.

The investment announced Tuesday would come from the $100 billion investment fund SoftBank Chief Executive Masayoshi Son is setting up with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign-wealth fund and other potential partners, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Trump made the announcement in the lobby of Trump Tower in Manhattan where he met with the head of SoftBank, a $68 billion telecommunications and tech investment behemoth.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Masa from SoftBank of Japan, and he’s just agreed to invest $50 billion in the United States and 50,000 jobs,” Trump said.

“He would never do this had we (Trump) not won the election!” Trump later Tweeted.

Prior to the election, SoftBank said Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) would be the lead partner in the fund and could invest up to $45 billion over the next five years. SoftBank expects to put in at least $25 billion. Several other large, unnamed investors are in talks on their participation and could bring the total size of the new fund up to $100 billion, SoftBank said.

Son, who wore a red tie and red sweater under his suit jacket, told reporters his company would create jobs by investing in startup companies in the United States.

“We are going to invest $50 billion into the U.S. and commit to create 50,000 new jobs,” Son said, adding that he saw a lot of “deregulation” under a Trump administration.

Trump and Son did not give a timeline for the investment. Trump’s four-year term will begin after his Jan. 20 inauguration.

U.S.-listed shares of SoftBank gained 3 percent to $30.99.

Son had hoped to merge Sprint with T-Mobile US to take on U.S. market leaders AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc.

Shares of Sprint briefly reached their highest level in 2-1/2 years, soon after Son’s comments. They closed up 1.5 percent to $8.17 in heavy trading, ending well below session highs. Shares of T-Mobile US were up 1.8 percent at $55.99.

It was not immediately clear how much of SoftBank’s investment had been disclosed before. Softbank said on Nov. 7, the day before the U.S. election, it planned to make future large-scale investments via the $100 billion tech fund, rather than on its own, to avoid growing already-bloated debt.

Whether or not Trump’s election led to SoftBank’s planned investment, the billionaire’s victory has been a boon to stock investors. The Dow Jones industrial average closed at another record level on Tuesday, its 11th new high since the Nov. 8 vote.

Should the SoftBank fund grow as large as $100 billion, it would be one of the world’s largest private equity investors and a potential kingpin in the technology sector.

SoftBank has also been stepping up investment in new areas. It agreed to buy U.K. chip design firm Arm Holdings in July in Japan’s largest ever outbound deal.

(Reporting by Steve Holland, Eric Walsh and Malathi Nayak; Writing by Doina Chiacu and Nick Zieminski; Editing by Andrew Hay)

IMAGE: Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son shows a signed page to the press after meeting with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., December 6, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Sprint And Verizon Wireless Customers In Line For Refunds After Settlements

Sprint And Verizon Wireless Customers In Line For Refunds After Settlements

By Paul Muschick, The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.) (TNS)

Sprint Corp. and Verizon Wireless have agreed to refund customers to settle national investigations alleging they allowed their billing systems to be used by other companies that “crammed” unauthorized charges onto customers’ bills.

Sprint and Verizon will pay a total of $158 million in refunds and fines under settlements with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Communications Commission and the attorneys general of all states.

“Cramming is a deceptive practice that exploits consumers,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane said in a statement. “It is particularly insidious because consumers are charged for services they never ordered.”

Verizon will pay $90 million and Sprint will pay $68 million. Of those amounts, Verizon will pay $70 million in customer refunds and Sprint will pay $50 million. The rest of the money will be paid to state and federal authorities.

How much each customer may receive will be determined case-by-case. The settlements are pending approval in federal court. You can reach the Verizon settlement administrator by phone at 888-726-7063 and the Sprint settlement administrator at 877-389-8787.

Cramming occurs when a company uses your mobile or landline phone bill like a credit card and adds charges for services such as trivia, ringtones and horoscopes that you didn’t agree to. The phone companies benefit because they are paid by the other companies to provide billing services.

“The lack of oversight by Sprint and Verizon allowed the vendors to have nearly unfettered access to consumers’ wireless accounts,” the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said in a statement. “The billing systems for premium messages attracted and enabled unscrupulous merchants who, in some cases, only needed consumers’ phone numbers to cram illegitimate charges onto wireless bills.”

Customers can get charged by responding to vague spam text messages or emails, or by clicking on ads that ask you to enter your cell phone number. Charges can be one-time or occur every month. The amounts can vary and often are vaguely defined and hard to identify on bills, which is why you should check your bills closely each month.

T-Mobile and AT&T entered similar nationwide settlements last year. All four major mobile carriers no longer bill customers for “premium” subscription text message services.

Paul Muschick of The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.) helps consumers fight errors, incompetence and arrogance by businesses, governments and institutions.

(c)2015 The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.), Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Mike Mozart via Flickr

Sprint To Pay $7.5 Million Over Failure To Honor Do-Not-Call Requests

Sprint To Pay $7.5 Million Over Failure To Honor Do-Not-Call Requests

By Ricardo Lopez, Los Angeles Times

Sprint will pay $7.5 million to resolve federal regulators’ inquiry into its failure to honor consumers’ requests that they not receive telemarketing calls or texts, the Federal Communications Commission said Monday.

The agreement between Sprint and the FCC marks the largest settlement yet of do-not-call violations, the FCC said. It follows a settlement of similar allegations against the company in 2011. Under the latest accord, Sprint will have to implement a compliance plan and update regulators on its efforts over the next two years.

“We expect companies to respect the privacy of consumers who opted out of marketing calls,” said Travis LeBlanc, acting chief of the FCC Enforcement Bureau. “When a consumer tells a company to stop calling or testing with promotional pitches, that request must be honored. Today’s settlement leaves no question that protecting consumer privacy is a top enforcement priority.”

In an emailed statement, Crystal Davis, a Sprint spokeswoman, said the settlement pertained to issues “resulting from technical and inadvertent human errors” that the company reported to the FCC.

“We have conducted a thorough, top-to-bottom evaluation of our do-not-call data management systems, and significant capital investments have been made to improve our … architecture, oversight and compliance,” Davis said.

Since 2003, American consumers have been able to opt out of receiving many telemarketing calls by registering on a national do-not-call registry. But companies with which consumers have established business relationships are exempt, as are nonprofits, the FCC said.

Photo: Scriptingnews via Flickr