- SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son is stepping down from the board of Alibaba, he announced in a shareholder call on Wednesday.
- Son was one of Alibaba’s earliest backers, making a $20 million investment in the company two decades ago that was worth $60 billion by 2014. He said he will remain a “long-term investor.”
- He’s now focused on righting SoftBank’s financials, which have taken a hit from COVID-19 and from several bets on tech startups that tanked in the past year.
- Son said he will take a 50% pay cut this year as SoftBank recovers from its losses.
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SoftBank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son is resigning from Alibaba’s board as he focuses his attention on shoring up SoftBank’s troubled financials, he said in a shareholder call Wednesday.
Son said the departure is amicable and that SoftBank will remain a “long-term investor” in Alibaba, which was one of its earliest and most successful bets. Son invested $20 million in the Chinese retailer in 2000; that investment was worth more than $60 billion by the time Alibaba went public in 2014.
Meanwhile, Son aimed to assuage SoftBank investors’ concerns on the call Wednesday, arguing that SoftBank’s financials are looking up after a period of turmoil. SoftBank reported on operating loss of $12.7 billion for the past year, which Son attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic and to a series of bets that didn’t pan out.
One of those bets was WeWork, which SoftBank reportedly poured $18.5 billion into before its failed IPO last year. SoftBank ultimately gave WeWork a $2.9 billion valuation in March, down from $47 billion in 2019.
“The responsibility is all mine,” Son told shareholders, adding that he’s cutting his salary this year from $1.9 million to just under $1 million. “I pushed though and that is my responsibility. I should take a pay cut.”
But Son said that SoftBank’s financials are on the mend, and that the value of its holdings rose to roughly $280 billion this week from $262 billion last month.
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