TOKYO: Once requested on Twitter about his receding hairline, Masayoshi Son, founder of Japanese telecoms giant SoftBank, retorted: "My hair is not receding. I'm advancing."
It was a generally bullish remark from the 60-year-old rich person, listed by Forbes as Japan's richest man with an estimated fortune of $22.2 billion, who has launched into a livid spree of purchases culminating in Thursday's deal to take a hefty stake in ride-sharing app Uber.
Under Son's leadership, SoftBank is sending shockwaves throughout the tech international with its massive new Vision Fund -- a undertaking capital fund with $100 billion in its coffers supposed for start-ups.
The new fund is expected to dominate the trade to such an extent, it is playfully referred to as a "gorilla".
The bold and flamboyant Son was one of the first personalities from the business international to satisfy some other unconventional rich person -- Donald Trump -- remaining 12 months after his election victory.
Son pledged to take a position $50 billion in the USA economy and create 50,000 jobs and Trump's off-the-cuff announcement of this gave journalists their first glimpse into the president-elect's ordinary communique technique.
Son's SoftBank has now not been afraid to undertaking outdoor its core business -- finishing offers with the likes of e-commerce Chinese giant Alibaba and French robotics firm Aldebaran, which evolved the chatty human-shaped "Pepper" robotic.
And on Thursday, Softbank and Uber announced that the tech titan would take a large stake in the USA ridesharing giant -- 15 p.c of the fairness consistent with a supply conversant in the terms of the deal.
But the wheeler-dealing of today belies a background that could scarcely be more humble.
Son was born in 1957 to ethnic Korean parents on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu.
His circle of relatives scratched a living raising poultry and hogs in a country the place Koreans have lengthy faced discrimination stemming from the Japanese career of the peninsula between 1910 and 1945.
"I sat in a cart when I was small. It was so slimy that I felt sick. My grandmother, who is dead now, was pulling the cart," Son recalled in a 1996 speech when accepting a business award.
"We collected leftover food from neighbours and fed it to cattle. It was slimy. We worked hard," he said. "And I've worked hard."
Son went to the USA as a 16-year-old and later studied on the University of California at Berkeley the place he began his business occupation.
His first giant good fortune came when he invented a pc device to translate English into Japanese. He later sold it to Sharp for one million bucks.
In 1981, a 12 months after returning from the USA, he founded SoftBank as a instrument wholesaler and writer of pc magazines.
Since going public in 1994, SoftBank has consistently made headlines with its competitive strategy of taking up Japanese and foreign companies, a jolt to the staid international of corporate Japan.
The corporate was as soon as the top shareholder in Yahoo and it has been credited with pushing broadband Internet get right of entry to in Japan.
In the 1990s and 2000s, SoftBank purchased and sold Ziff-Davis Communications, the USA writer of pc magazines including PC Magazine, in addition to chipmaker Kingston Technologies, and conference organisers Interface and Comdex.
It also owns the Fukuoka-based Hawks baseball crew.
The corporate shook up a market lengthy ruled by NTT DoCoMo and smaller rival KDDI, introducing a significantly inexpensive rate schedule and bringing Apple's iPhone to Japan.
Although it now not has the monopoly on the wildly successful iPhone, SoftBank Mobile is Japan's third-largest provider, and does specifically well among urbanites, at whom its savvy advertising and marketing campaigns are regularly aimed.
"He's an unusual character," David Gibson, an analyst at Macquarie Bank, said of Son.
"He has a more longer term vision than many other investors," he advised AFP.
Son also expanded into the solar power sector as Japan searches for secure and clean alternatives to nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima atomic disaster.
The rich person changed into a hugely adopted presence on Twitter on the time of the nuclear disaster, the use of the social media platform to rail in opposition to nuclear energy.
It was a generally bullish remark from the 60-year-old rich person, listed by Forbes as Japan's richest man with an estimated fortune of $22.2 billion, who has launched into a livid spree of purchases culminating in Thursday's deal to take a hefty stake in ride-sharing app Uber.
Under Son's leadership, SoftBank is sending shockwaves throughout the tech international with its massive new Vision Fund -- a undertaking capital fund with $100 billion in its coffers supposed for start-ups.
The new fund is expected to dominate the trade to such an extent, it is playfully referred to as a "gorilla".
The bold and flamboyant Son was one of the first personalities from the business international to satisfy some other unconventional rich person -- Donald Trump -- remaining 12 months after his election victory.
Son pledged to take a position $50 billion in the USA economy and create 50,000 jobs and Trump's off-the-cuff announcement of this gave journalists their first glimpse into the president-elect's ordinary communique technique.
Son's SoftBank has now not been afraid to undertaking outdoor its core business -- finishing offers with the likes of e-commerce Chinese giant Alibaba and French robotics firm Aldebaran, which evolved the chatty human-shaped "Pepper" robotic.
And on Thursday, Softbank and Uber announced that the tech titan would take a large stake in the USA ridesharing giant -- 15 p.c of the fairness consistent with a supply conversant in the terms of the deal.
But the wheeler-dealing of today belies a background that could scarcely be more humble.
Son was born in 1957 to ethnic Korean parents on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu.
His circle of relatives scratched a living raising poultry and hogs in a country the place Koreans have lengthy faced discrimination stemming from the Japanese career of the peninsula between 1910 and 1945.
"I sat in a cart when I was small. It was so slimy that I felt sick. My grandmother, who is dead now, was pulling the cart," Son recalled in a 1996 speech when accepting a business award.
"We collected leftover food from neighbours and fed it to cattle. It was slimy. We worked hard," he said. "And I've worked hard."
Son went to the USA as a 16-year-old and later studied on the University of California at Berkeley the place he began his business occupation.
His first giant good fortune came when he invented a pc device to translate English into Japanese. He later sold it to Sharp for one million bucks.
In 1981, a 12 months after returning from the USA, he founded SoftBank as a instrument wholesaler and writer of pc magazines.
Since going public in 1994, SoftBank has consistently made headlines with its competitive strategy of taking up Japanese and foreign companies, a jolt to the staid international of corporate Japan.
The corporate was as soon as the top shareholder in Yahoo and it has been credited with pushing broadband Internet get right of entry to in Japan.
In the 1990s and 2000s, SoftBank purchased and sold Ziff-Davis Communications, the USA writer of pc magazines including PC Magazine, in addition to chipmaker Kingston Technologies, and conference organisers Interface and Comdex.
It also owns the Fukuoka-based Hawks baseball crew.
The corporate shook up a market lengthy ruled by NTT DoCoMo and smaller rival KDDI, introducing a significantly inexpensive rate schedule and bringing Apple's iPhone to Japan.
Although it now not has the monopoly on the wildly successful iPhone, SoftBank Mobile is Japan's third-largest provider, and does specifically well among urbanites, at whom its savvy advertising and marketing campaigns are regularly aimed.
"He's an unusual character," David Gibson, an analyst at Macquarie Bank, said of Son.
"He has a more longer term vision than many other investors," he advised AFP.
Son also expanded into the solar power sector as Japan searches for secure and clean alternatives to nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima atomic disaster.
The rich person changed into a hugely adopted presence on Twitter on the time of the nuclear disaster, the use of the social media platform to rail in opposition to nuclear energy.
Masayoshi Son: From chicken feed to Japan's richest tycoon
![Masayoshi Son: From chicken feed to Japan's richest tycoon]()
Reviewed by Kailash
on
December 30, 2017
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