Masayoshi Son

Masayoshi Son
Masayoshi Son Softbank Mobile Summit 2008
Born	(1957-08-11) August 11, 1957 Tosu, Saga Prefecture, Japan
Alma mater	University of California, Berkeley
Occupation	Founder and CEO of SoftBank
Net worth	US$ 8.1 billion

Masayoshi Son (Japanese: 孫正義, Chinese: 孫正義, Korean: 손정의 Son Jeong-ui; born August 11, 1957) is a Japanese businessman and the founder and current chief executive officer of SoftBank, and the chief executive officer of SoftBank Mobile. According to Forbes magazine, his net worth is $8.1 billion as of 2011 and he is the second richest man in Japan, despite being the person who has lost the most money in history (approximately $70 billion in the dot com crash of 2000). Forbes also describes him as a philanthropist.

Background

Of Korean descent, Son's family adopted the Japanese surname Yasumoto (安本) in daily life to avoid discrimination by having a Korean surname, and Son used this surname when he was a child. Son pursued his interests in business by securing a meeting with Japan McDonald's president Den Fujita. Taking his advice, Son began studying English and computer science.

At age 16, Son moved to California and finished high school while staying with friends and family in South San Francisco. He attended the University of California, Berkeley and Los Angeles in which he majored in economics and studied computer science. Enamored by a microchip featured in a magazine, Son at age 19 became confident that computer technology would ignite the next commercial revolution.

Convinced that anything related to microchips could yield a fortune, Son decided to produce at least one entrepreneurial idea a day. He patented a translating device that he eventually sold to Sharp Electronics for $1 million. Applications of the patent include the Wizard series of Sharp PDAs.

Son graduated from Berkeley with a BA in economics in 1980, and started Unison in Oakland, California, which has since been bought by Kyocera. In 1990, Son Masayoshi adopted Japanese citizenship.

Yahoo! BB

Although SoftBank's stake in Yahoo! had dwindled to 7%, Son established Yahoo! BroadBand in September 2001 with Yahoo! Japan in which he still owned a controlling interest. After a severe devaluation of SoftBank's equity, Son was forced to focus his attention on Yahoo! BB and BB Phone. Using ADSL technology that could reach speeds upwards of 10 Mbit/s (new service can reach about 100 Mbit/s), Yahoo! BB currently^{[citation needed]} reaches 4.3 million subscribers each paying about $20–$30 a month, but continues to lose about $100 million a month. So far, SoftBank has accumulated about $1.3 billion in debt. Yet, Yahoo! BB acquired Japan Telecom, the then third largest broadband and landline provider with 600,000 residential and 170,000 commercial subscribers. Yahoo! BB is now Japan's leading broadband provider.

Vodafone K. K.

On March 17, 2006 Vodafone Group announced it had agreed to sell Vodafone K.K. to SoftBank for approximately 1.75 trillion Japanese yen (approximately US$ 15.1 billion). On April 14, 2006 SoftBank and Vodafone K. K. jointly announced, that the brand and company name Vodafone will be changed to a "new, easy-to-understand and familiar company name and brand". Masayoshi Son is the CEO (Representative Director) of Vodafone K. K.

Investment in Solar Power

In response to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011, Masayoshi Son criticized the nuclear industry for creating “the problem that worries Japanese the most today”, and engaged in investing in a nation-wide solar power network for Japan.

External links

• 孫正義 (masason) on Twitter
• 孫正義 (masayosison) on Facebook
• Masayoshi Son, AXA Talents, August 1, 2006 .
• Bio and Photo, Time Magazine 

Articles

• Son prefers small shares of companies to huge shares, Business Week