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?
