BENGALURU: Tech billionaires Jack Ma and Masayoshi Son have parted ways after 15 years with Son exiting Ma’s e-commerce platform Alibaba’s board. Ma had last month stated that he will be leaving SoftBank Corp’s board. Although Son didn’t reveal any disagreements with Jack Ma during his virtual conference with the shareholders, he said that the exit from $600 billion worth Alibaba was like “graduating” from his most successful investment ever.
From being one of the Alibaba’s earliest investors (investment worth $20 million in 2000) to now owning 29% worth $125 billion, SoftBank is also reportedly planning to sell a part of its stake in the firm to raise around $11 billion.
Apart from Alibaba, SoftBank’s Son had come under the line of fire for his investment strategy in other companies, said that asset monetisation has become key and that the tech conglomerate is also planning to sell a part of its stake in US wireless carrier, T Mobile to raise another $20 billion.
SoftBank’s flagship, $100 bilion Vision Fund had reported staggering losses worth $18 billion in FY20 after some of its major portfolio companies like WeWork, Uber, OYO suffered huge losses with the onset of COVID pandemic. “Nearly 18 out of the total 80 unicorns under Vision Fund’s belt will go bankrupt and another 15 will go down,” Son had said during an earlier earnings call. However, Son reiterated during Wednesday’s investors meeting that SoftBank is not finished yet and infact the shareholders value are back to pre-Corona levels.