SoftBank chooses Jersey for $100bn fund

Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group, which is raising a $100 billion Vision Fund for investment in technology companies, has selected Jersey as the record-breaking fund’s domicile.

Jonathan Bullock, international chief operating officer and managing director of Softbank, appeared on stage at a London event arranged by Jersey Finance on Tuesday, to discuss its decision to use a “Jersey-London axis” to domicile and run the fund.

London was a “natural choice” as a base for the fund’s team, said Bullock. SoftBank has its base in Tokyo and has had a presence in California for a couple of years, but had decided on London because “it has a good ecosystem and good access to capital,” he said.

On the size of the team that has been assembled to manage the fund in London, which unconfirmed media reports have reported to be around a dozen, Bullock said: “We are a small group of people and can move very fast.”

“We have a handful of people and those people are on planes, so [London] is a good place to be,” he added.

As a financial center Jersey offered the fund what it needed to scale up quickly. “Everything we have due diligenced has come through and then some,” said Bullock. “No investors have questioned our choice of jurisdiction.”

Robert Milner, a Jersey-based partner at law firm Carey Olsen who is working on the fund formation, commented on the speed with which SoftBank had established the team, fund and infrastructure. “It has been an experience to work on,” he said. “The thoroughness of being able to build up a team from scratch and satisfy demanding investors on that scale and at that speed: the rest of the world will see this and learn from it.”

For regulatory reasons there was little Bullock could say about the fund itself, he said. “Yes, we are seeking to raise a very large fund and it will hopefully change and redefine a few things.”

Bullock declined to comment on specifics of the fund, but said “if you understand SoftBank, then you understand a little about the fund.”

SoftBank, a Japanese telecoms conglomerate, has a “rich history of investing,” said Bullock, and operates over “very long timescales.” 

Assuming the SoftBank Vision Fund reaches its target size of $100 billion, it will be nearly five times the size of largest private equity fund ever, the $21.7 billion Blackstone Capital Partners V, raised in 2006.