Goldman wins in SoftBank's $2.9bn trade-from-home sale

Overseas connections lacking in Japanese rivals key to record all-remote deal

A trader in the Goldman Sachs booth at the New York Stock Exchange: All participants in the SoftBank transaction operated at home from the outset. © Reuters

RYO IGAWA and AKIRA YAMASHITA, Nikkei staff writers

June 4, 2020 03:27 JST

TOKYO -- On May 21, Makoto Ito, head of the capital markets division at Goldman Sachs Japan, logged into Zoom on his computer at his Tokyo home.

Using a high-security account for Goldman employees, he began sending directions to a team of about a dozen people to begin a 310 billion yen ($2.87 billion) sale of shares in wireless carrier SoftBank Corp.