REUTERS-U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday said telecommunications
group Sprint Corp (S.N) 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 (9984.T)
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.
REUTERS
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