Daisuke Wakabayashi and Kana Inagaki for the Wall Street Journal:

Japan’s Softbank Corp. said Monday it will buy a 70% stake in U.S. mobile carrier Sprint Nextel Corp. for about $20 billion in the biggest-ever overseas acquisition by a Japanese firm.

Softbank is one of Japan’s largest mobile carriers, and acquiring Sprint would give the company a big push into the United States. The company hopes to close the deal by mid-2013.