For the first part of the current fiscal year, Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son announces a record loss of 23 billion euros, personally classifying it as a “truly historic disgrace.” He had listened only to his ego and had not taken into account the voices of his allies. It is true that the reasons for the high loss lie in particular in the weakness of the Japanese yen and tech stocks. However, Softbank’s business units failed to deliver and countermeasures were taken too late.
Masayoshi Son was born in Japan in 1957. He moved to San Francisco on his own at 16, learned English and graduated from high school. At Berkeley, he studied economics and listened to computer science lectures. While still a student, he developed a translation device and sold it to Sharp for $1.7 million. With the money, he imported the arcade game Space Invaders and distributed it on campus. In 1980, with his university degree in his pocket, he founded Unison, which he sold to Kyocera.
In 1981, Masayoshi Son returned to Japan and founded Softbank. He cooperated with Microsoft and acquired 25% of Novell Japan. Over the next 20 years, he acquired 37% of Yahoo, bought COMDEX and Kingston Technology. In the New Economy phase, Softbank took stakes in many Internet companies, at times worth $140 billion. In telecommunications, Softbank Networks became a provider of broadband Internet connections and soon became the largest competitor of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT). The Yahoo BB subsidiary took over Japan Telecom and became the largest broadband provider. In 2006, Softbank acquired Vodafone Japan and marketed apple iPhones exclusively in Japan for a long time. In 2013, the U.S. provider Sprint was acquired.
Softbank entered Deutsche Telekom AG in 2021 as a “strategic partner” with 4.5% of the shares and was also to occupy a position on the Supervisory Board. A few weeks later, Softbank sold half of the share package again for 1.5 billion euros via Goldman Sachs, although a ban on sales until 2024 had actually been agreed.
Softbank is also a big player in electronics, not least through its purchase of chipmaker ARM in 2016 for €28 billion. The following year, the robotics company Boston Dynamics was acquired by Alphabet (google).
The most valuable investment was certainly the entry into the trading platform Alibaba: 20 million became 50 billion dollars over time. Softbank holds a 28% stake in Alibaba Group.
According to Forbes list for 2022, Masayoshi Son is the richest man in Japan with a total wealth of $21 billion.
