Masayoshi Son: the God of tech tests the faithful

Masayoshi Son, the founder of Japanese tech giant Softbank, has had a bad crisis. He has bounced back before, and will do again, he insists. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s performed miracles, says Jane Lewis.

Masayoshi Son © Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(Image credit: Masayoshi Son © Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

In certain Japanese companies, founder-presidents are sometimes referred to as “kamisama”, or “god”, says the Financial Times. Not all deserve the title, but Masayoshi Son, the irrepressible founder of SoftBank, “has been Japan’s archetypal kamisama for decades. He has led, inspired and been worshipped.” To support the faithful, “Masa” has appeared to perform miracles – his early $20m investment in the Chinese ecommerce start-up Alibaba is now worth around $140bn and considered “among the greatest in tech history”, for example. Which might help explain why – when unveiling the worst loss in SoftBank’s history last week – Son compared himself to Jesus, noting that the Messiah was also “misunderstood and criticised” yet managed to bounce back. Time, he said, would show the value of his investments.

An extraordinary resurrection

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.