BackSoftBank names Nikesh Arora president, Son’s likely successor
Currently the head of investments at SoftBank, Arora will take charge as president of the firm on 19 June
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Tokyo: Japan’s SoftBank Corp. unveiled a management reshuffle on Monday, appointing investments head Nikesh Arora as president and naming him as a potential successor to chief executive officer Masayoshi Son, as the telecoms conglomerate steps up its overseas expansion.
The move comes as Son and SoftBank are battling to make their 2013 acquisition of US carrier Sprint Corp. for more than $20 billion profitable. A sluggish Japanese economy has forced the firm to increasingly look overseas for growth.
Announcing Arora’s appointment at SoftBank’s earnings conference, billionaire Son, who is relinquishing the president’s post, said the former Google Inc. executive was a “strong candidate" to lead the company in future.
“Yes. He’s 10 years younger than me, and he has more abilities than me," Son told reporters, when asked if Arora was a potential candidate to succeed him. “The last nine months I’ve spent with him have made me sure of that, but I’m not going to retire soon."
Arora was hired in July to run a newly created unit called SoftBank Internet and Media Inc., reporting directly to Son. Arora will assume his new role on 19 June.
SoftBank has been weighed down by the costs of trying to turn around Sprint, which has been in intense competition with larger US rivals AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc.
Spriwewnt, in which SoftBank owns 80%, has undergone a long-haul revamping of its network, shedding thousands of jobs and triggering a mass exodus of subscribers.
“Many tech companies face a decline after thirty years due to evolving technologies, changing business models and overreliance on founders," Son said in a statement. “To create a sustainable growth business for centuries to come, we must transform our current operating assets and take a systematic approach to supporting our group of disruptive entrepreneurs. As President of SoftBank Group, Nikesh will work with me to drive the transformation of SoftBank as it enters a new phase."
SoftBank has made a string of other investments in recent years, including $250 million in privately-held Hollywood movie studio Legendary Entertainment, and $600 million in Travice Inc., the operator of Chinese taxi hailing app Kuaidi Dache.
As well as being the largest investor in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, SoftBank has plans to invest $10 billion in India’s potentially huge but underdeveloped online retail market.
In October, SoftBank made its biggest bet yet on Indian Internet firms, investing $837 million in e-commerce marketplace Snapdeal.com and online taxi booking service Ola. In December, a SoftBank unit said it will invest, along with Falcon Edge Capital and others, $90 million in Locon Solutions Pvt. Ltd, which runs Housing.com, a realty website.
The Ghaziabad-born Arora, as chief business officer of Google, was the fourth most important man at Google Inc. and the company’s highest paid employee in 2012, with a total compensation of around $51 million, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.
He quit in July 2014 to join Softbank.
Arora left India 25 years ago with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University), a place on the MBA programme at Northeastern University in Boston and $3,000 (his father’s life savings).
He moved from a promising job at the financial services company Fidelity Investments to the investment management firm Putnam Investment Management LLC, to Deutsche Telekom AG, T-Mobile USA Inc., and finally to Google, first as the president of Europe, Middle East, and Africa operations and then to the chief business officer’s role.
In a 2013 interview, when he was still in Google and posted in Mountain View, California, Arora was both sanguine and concise when asked about his career trajectory.
“I feel privileged and lucky," he said. “Life is a combination of capability and luck and hard work, if you get all three you’re able to break through various ceilings. I could have decided to live in Boston, had a wonderful life, I chose not to. I could have done a start-up. I could have been extremely successful there, but then again, I’m extremely successful with what I do now."
“The sum total seems to have worked out fine."
Teppei Kasai is a Reuters correspondent.
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