Although no serious business impact is expected, the friendship between the two leaders is very well known and Son’s stepping down will mark the end of an era.
This comes after Jack Ma, Alibaba’s co-founder, recently departed from the board of SoftBank. Alibaba has been SoftBank’s most successful investment, benefiting SoftBank immensely from its rising value. Son had invested $20 million in Alibaba in 2000 and has held his position on its board since 2005, helping the Chinese e-commerce company reach around $600 billion valuation. SoftBank also turned to Alibaba’s stake this year to raise funds when it reported a humongous loss as companies in its portfolio like Uber, WeWork took a huge hit.
Son also told in his meeting on Thursday that he is in a process of offloading assets worth about $42 billion to cut debt in order to improve investors’ sentiments and to bankroll stock buybacks, as per media reports. The company also announced a buyback worth 500 billion Yen in its meeting, making it to be the third one in row.
SoftBank had earlier in the week made a divestment worth $20 million in T-Mobile US Inc. This transaction marks completion of 80% of Masayoshi’s planned total from an asset sale programme, the 80% level of $35 billion also includes Alibaba’s stake sale.
In the annual meeting, the Japanese conglomerate’s CEO, Son, stated that the company’s holdings are coming back to pre-Covid levels. He assured that digital transformation and artificial intelligence advancement will help his investments as well, both of which have seen a spurt in growth due to pandemic and subsequent lockdown.
