Īs of 2023, Son ranks 69th on the Forbes list of The World's Billionaires and is #239 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. In the 2018's ranking, he was placed on the 55th position. In 2013, Son was named the world's 45th most powerful person by Forbes Magazine's List of The World's Most Powerful People. Known for his eccentricity and criticized because of his hubris, his sanity has been questioned in the media prompting him to reply with humorous assent. A controversial figure, Son has been called a gambler, mocked by some specialized media and dubbed the worst investor ever. However, after a number of high-profile setbacks, Son's investing strategy in the first and second SoftBank Vision Funds established in 20, has been described as one reliant on the greater fool theory. made him noted worldwide as a stock investor. into an investment management firm called SoftBank Group Corp. The morphing of his own telecom company SoftBank Corp. SoftBank's 27 percent stake in Alibaba was worth $132 billion in 2018, including additional purchases of the stock since 2000. Since Son founded SoftBank in 1981, he has made many investments, but the vast majority of those deals failed, and his reputation as an investor rests almost solely on his $20 million initial investment in Alibaba Group in 2000, a stake that had grew to a paper valuation of about $50 billion just before the Alibaba IPO in 2014.

Poor investment decisions of Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Group led to a panoply of losing investments across the history of the company. Īs an entrepreneur, he achieved notability in PC software distribution, computing-related book and magazine publishing, and telecommunications in Japan, starting in the 1980s and booming throughout the 1990s and 2000s. (SBG), a strategic technology-focused investment holding company, as well as chairman of UK-based Arm Holdings. He is the founder, representative director, corporate officer, chairman & CEO of SoftBank Group Corp. A 3rd generation ' Zainichi Korean', he naturalized as a Japanese citizen in 1990. Masayoshi Son ( Japanese: 孫正義, romanized: Son Masayoshi, Korean: 손정의, romanized: Son Jeong-ui) (born 11 August 1957) is a Japanese billionaire technology entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist.

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