- Former SoftBank exec Marcelo Claure has plans for his personal billions.
- Claure Group set up to invest in companies and founders in Latin America, across media, real estate, sports, tech, and telecom.
- Investor sights are already set on Latin American operator Millicom.
Marcelo Claure is back on the investment scene with billions of his own and plans for Latin America, a year after leaving SoftBank where he oversaw the operator’s international portfolio, including stakes in Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile US.
The former Sprint chief executive and current T-Mobile board member announced in late-January his intent to dedicate most of his time and a “very meaningful portion” of his capital to support businesses and founders in Latin America. Claure, who is from Bolivia, also said he will work with international companies that want to grow in the region.
Based in Miami, he set up the family office company Claure Group last year to manage his personal wealth, which is understood to be in the region of $2bn (£1.6bn/€1.9bn), according to Bloomberg. Within that is Claure Capital, described as a “multibillion-dollar” investment firm spanning media, real estate, sports, tech, telecoms, and other high-growth sectors. He also reportedly wants to start his own fund.
For now, though, the separation agreement with SoftBank prevents him from raising capital from third parties to invest for a “certain period of time”, but he can invest his own money and is doing so, Claure told Bloomberg Línea in a September 2022 interview.
Millicom an early target in Latin America
One of his early moves is in the telecoms sector he knows so well. Claure and Apollo Global Management are in discussions with Millicom International Cellular over a takeover that reportedly values the Latin America-focused operator at about $10bn, including debt.
Millicom confirmed it was in talks with Apollo and Claure Group over the “potential acquisition of all outstanding shares” in late-January 2022, after the Financial Times cited sources “familiar to the matter” as stating Millicom was considering a bid at a “high teens per share price”.
The FT said Apollo and Claure are attempting to structure their bid to avoid repayment or refinancing of about $6.9bn of Millicom’s existing debts.
Atlas Investissement, the investment vehicle owned by French billionaire and Iliad Group founder Xavier Niel, acquired a 6.99% stake in Millicom during November 2022, following its purchase of 2.5% of Vodafone Group in September 2022 (Vodafonewatch, #211–#212).
Millicom is in the process of carving out its 10,000-plus tower assets, and CEO Mauricio Ramos reiterated that the operator is “on track” for a transaction by the end of this year, speaking on its earnings calls for the fourth quarter ending 31 December 2022. He has previously said that this could be accompanied by a stake sale to a partner, possibly in a 50:50 split. Ramos also unveiled the new brand for the towerco, Lati (Latin America Digital Infrastructure).
Millicom is headquartered in Luxembourg with a corporate office in Coral Gables, Florida. It operates under the Tigo brand in nine Latin American markets: Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and Paraguay. At the end of 2022, Millicom provided mobile and fibre cable services to in excess of 45 million customers, with a fibre cable footprint of more than 13 million homes.
Real estate and retail
Other investments include the new Wynwood Plaza tower office in Miami, where the Claure Group has just leased one of the floors for its operations. Claure also invested $100m in international online retailer SHEIN and was appointed Chairman of SHEIN Latin America.
Claure was Chief Operating Officer of SoftBank Group and CEO of SoftBank Group International from May 2018 to January 2022. He ran the Group’s investment portfolio outside Japan, as well as the $8bn SoftBank Latin America Fund that he launched in 2019. The Group’s portfolio comprised about 40 companies, including Arm, WeWork, and SoftBank’s stakes in Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile US.
He left the company in late-January 2022, reportedly after a compensation disagreement with Group CEO Masayoshi Son. His high-profile departure came at a tumultuous time for SoftBank as investors worried about the value of its tech investments.
Claure was brought into the Japanese conglomerate’s orbit in 2013 when SoftBank bought Brightstar, the mobile distribution company he started in 1997. He was appointed CEO of Sprint in 2014, in which SoftBank held a majority, and was one of the architects of the merger with T-Mobile. After the Sprint–T-Mobile deal, he joined the executive ranks at SoftBank and was appointed to T-Mobile’s board. He was also expected to be offered a seat on Deutsche Telekom’s Supervisory Board as part of the share-swap deal with SoftBank that saw the Japanese Group acquire a 4.5% share in DT. He has been a key player in refreshing ties between SoftBank and DT through their strategic partnership (Deutsche Telekomwatch, #111 and passim).
