For a long time, eccentric visionary Masayoshi Son had the dubious distinction of having lost more money than anyone else in history.
Masayoshi Son Net Worth: $30 Billion
Shares in his SoftBank investment conglomerate plunged by $59 billion in the 2000 dot com crash, before which he was temporarily the richest person in the world.
Yet Son has since bounced back from this loss to rank as 57th wealthiest person in the world as of 17 November, according to Forbes, with a net worth of around $30 billion.
There could be a lesson there for other investors: however bad things may get, perseverance and self-belief can win out.
Son has been behind both massive successes and failures throughout his time at the helm of Softbank, which he founded in 1981 as a software distributor. After moving into other sectors such as telecommunications, the group has grown to oversee a portfolio of investments worth more than $180 billion.
Among his biggest successes, attributable to his willingness to make outsized bets on the future of relatively unknown businesses, have been Softbank’s investments in Chinese tech giant Alibaba in 1999 and US internet giant Yahoo!.
His biggest failures, probably attributable to the same approach, have included the group’s backing of Kingston Technology – in which Softbank bought an 80% stake which it sold for massive loss three years later. Other failures include coworking start-up WeWork, which filed for bankruptcy last year, and Silicon Valley Bank, which collapsed in 2023.
In 2017 Softbank launched its venture capital Vision funds, which have attracted support of big name institutional investors, including Apple, Foxconn, the family office of billionaire Larry Ellison and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.
Son still holds a 29% stake in Softbank, which is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and has a total market capitalisation of around $83 billion.
Despite the group reporting a $1.7 billion loss in the year ending March 2024, down from $7.3 billion the previous year, the group’s shares are still up 47% year to date, though down 22% from their July peak.
Robin has more than six years of experience as a financial journalist, most of which were spent at Citywire, and covers the latest developments in the investing, trading and currency transfer space. Outside of work, he enjoys reading literature and philosophy and playing the piano.
You can contact Robin at robin@goodmoneyguide.com
