Masayoshi Son is a Japanese businessman and the founder and current chief executive officer of SoftBank, the chief executive officer of SoftBank Mobile, and current chairman of Sprint Corporation. According to Forbes magazine, his net worth is $9.1 billion as of 2013 and he is the second richest man in Japan,[1] despite having the distinction of losing the most money in history (approximately $70 billion during the dot com crash of 2000).[2] Forbes also describes him as a philanthropist.
Son was named the world's 45th most powerful person by Forbes Magazine's List of The World's Most Powerful People in 2013.[3]
SoftBank Corp. is a Japanese telecommunications and Internet corporation, with operations in broadband, fixed-line telecommunications, e-commerce, Internet, broadmedia, technology services, finance, media and marketing, and other businesses.
SoftBank was established in Tokyo, Japan on September 3, 1981, and had a market capitalization of approximately ¥9.53 Trillion (approx. US$92 billion) on April 1, 2014.
SoftBank's corporate profile includes various other companies such as Japanese broadband company SoftBank BB, data center company IDC Frontier, gaming company GungHo Online Entertainment, and the publishing company SB Creative. Additionally, it has various partnerships in Japanese subsidiaries of foreign companies such as Yahoo!, E-Trade, Ustream.tv, EF Education First and Morningstar. SBI Group is a Japanese financial services company that began in 1999 as a branch of SoftBank.[4]
SoftBank was the only official carrier of the iPhone in Japan until the release of iPhone 4S when it became available on au by KDDI as well.[5]
On October 14, 2012, SoftBank announced to acquire 70 percent of the U.S. telecommunications company Sprint Nextel Corporation for $20.1 billion.[6] The deal officially was approved by the FCC on July 5, 2013 for $21.6 billion of 78 percent shares which $5 billion of it is for the capital.[7][8] On August 6, 2013, SoftBank enacted a transaction that purchased approximately 2 percent more shares of Sprint Corporation which now has SoftBank having an 80 percent stake in Sprint Corporation.[2]
