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Meet the oddest of the oddball billionaires

SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son may have made and lost more money than anyone alive. It’s unlikely that he’s finished yet.

Adrian Wooldridge

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In 2019, Elliott Management, an activist investment fund which had built up a 3 per cent stake in SoftBank, demanded a meeting with the company’s founder and chief executive, Masayoshi Son.

Elliott complained that the company’s governance was such a mess that the stock was trading at least 50 per cent below net asset or “fair” value – the board was tame, the corporate structure was overcomplicated, and “transparency” was not even a concept. Other business titans such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg had bowed down before the god of good corporate governance. Why not Masa Son?

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    Original URL: https://www.afr.com/technology/meet-the-oddest-of-the-oddball-billionaires-20241031-p5kmz1