Softbank bets heavily on option purchases, primarily in tech sector: sources

(Reuters) – SoftBank Group Corp <9984.T> made significant option purchases in the U.S. stock market in recent weeks as a way of temporarily investing some of its proceeds from asset sales, people familiar with the matter said on Friday.

In August, SoftBank Chief Executive Masayoshi Son had announced a new investment management subsidiary that would park excess cash from a massive asset sale program in liquid stocks.

So far, SoftBank has spent roughly $10 billion buying shares. It has also spent more buying derivatives in U.S. stocks, the sources said. The Financial Times first reported on these derivative purchases on Friday.

A SoftBank spokeswoman declined to comment.

SoftBank has already built a stake worth around $1.2 billion in e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc , according to regulatory filings.

In addition to Amazon, the Japanese tech conglomerate has built stakes in Netflix Inc , Tesla Inc , Microsoft Corp and Alphabet Inc , according to the filings.

In total, SoftBank has injected roughly $4 billion building up these stakes.

(Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis in New York and Anirban Sen in Bengaluru; Editing by Tom Brown)