The unexpected departure of SoftBank Group President Nikesh Arora is raising concerns over one-man rule by Chairman Masayoshi Son, who doubles as CEO and is expected to take charge of global operations when his heir apparent steps down.
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Under fire from investors, SoftBank Group Corp president Nikesh Arora today resigned from his post.Mr Arora was handpicked by SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son as his successor. I want to cement SoftBank 2.0, develop Sprint to its true potential and work on a few more insane ideas. Masayoshi said that he will continue to be the be CEO for another five to ten years.
Arora’s exit came just a day after he got a clean-chit from a special committee set up by SoftBank to look into the allegations against him from some shareholders about his conduct and qualifications. He brought world-class execution skills to SoftBank, as evidenced in our myriad of investments over the past year, as well as the complex monetization of our Alibaba stake, and most recently our successful sale of Supercell.
In India, Arora led SoftBank’s investments in e-commerce marketplace Snapdeal, cab aggregator Ola, realty portal Housing.com and hotel booking site Oyo. Son said on Tuesday that the allegations were not the reason for Mr. Arora’s resignation. Arora was also being criticised by some shareholders over his compensation and they questioned some of his deals.
At that time, Son had also mentioned that Arora is the most likely candidate to succeed him in future.
In June past year, SoftBank along with contract manufacturing giant Foxconn, had partnered with Bharti Enterprises with plans to invest Dollars 20 billion in solar power projects in India.
“His broad experience and executive leadership in leading-edge technology companies will provide valuable insight and perspective to further Sprint’s growth and overall competitiveness”, Son said at the time.
Nikesh had joined SBG from Google as the CEO in September 2014.
It also suggested that the former Google executive may have been involved in past wrong-doing and generally poor business decisions.
Since Arora joined SoftBank, he invested almost $4 billion in startups around the world to look for a technology company capable of driving future growth.
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Ken Miyauchi has been with Softbank group since 1984. The struggling Sprint, an acquisition made before Mr. Arora arrived, was the main drag, but his investments into startups received heavy criticism from investors. The company has since reined in its investments, selling stakes in several companies such as Supercell and Alibaba, in order to focus on its core operations and strengthen the balance sheet under a programme called “Softbank 2.0”.
