SoftBank’s Vision fund to invest US$100 million in JV with China’s ZhongAn

SoftBank’s Vision fund to invest US$100 million in JV with China’s ZhongAn

SoftBank's giant Vision Fund will own 51% of the venture that aims to sell the Chinese firm's technology to financial and healthcare firms in Asia-Pacific.

The SoftBank Group Corp logo is displayed at the SoftBank World 2017 conference in Tokyo, Japan, July  2017. (Reuters pic)
HONG KONG:
Japan’s SoftBank Group will invest just over US$100 million in a joint venture with the international arm of China’s ZhongAn Online P&C Insurance, a ZhongAn executive said.

SoftBank’s giant Vision Fund will own 51% of the venture that aims to sell the Chinese firm’s technology to financial and healthcare firms in Asia-Pacific. ZhongAn will have a 49% stake in the venture, which will have an initial capital of US$200 million.

The companies announced the partnership earlier this month, without sharing the size of the investment.

ZhongAn will nominate two people to the new company’s board, while SoftBank will have one, ZhongAn’s CFO Francis Tang said on Monday, after the company reported a loss of 655.8 million yuan (US$95.40 million) for the first half of 2018.

SoftBank bought just under 5% of ZhongAn as part of the insurer’s stock market debut in Hong Kong in September last year.

“After their investment into ZhongAn’s IPO, … (SoftBank) saw that our technology could be exported to some of their portfolio investments, so they wanted to set up this joint venture,” Tang said.

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