We initiated a medium size position in SoftBank Corp. (TSE:9984, Financial) Run by one of the best value creators of our time, Masayoshi Son, SoftBank represents a collection of diverse assets in the wireless telecommunication services and Internet and Internet-related services providers. Amongst them is a 37% stake in Alibaba. With Amazon-like market opportunity, Facebook-like growth, and Google-like profit margins, Alibaba, in our view, is one of the most unique and attractive Internet assets in the world, although regular readers of this letter know that we are quite fond of a few others. While we think there is interesting optionality with SoftBank's acquisition of Sprint and potential acquisition of T-Mobile as well as with Yahoo Japan, Alibaba, which is expected to go public sometime in 2014, is unmistakably the main attraction.
From Baron Funds' first quarter 2014 commentary.
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