People familiar with the matter said that in recent weeks, these major shareholders have privately criticized SoftBank’s Vision Fund’s losses.
Editor’s note: This article comes from Tencent Technology .
November 27, according to foreign media reports, several major shareholders of Japan’s SoftBank Group are putting pressure on this technology conglomerate because of their governance structure of SoftBank and a series of unsatisfactory effects of its 100 billion US dollar investment fund. Worried about investment.
Softbank’s investors include Capital Group, hedge fund Tiger Global Management LLC, and Southeastern Asset Management. People familiar with the matter said that in recent weeks, these major shareholders have privately criticized SoftBank’s Vision Fund’s losses.
Informed sources said investors also criticized SoftBank’s plan to help raise funds for a second vision fund by providing billions of dollars in loans to its executives. In August, media reports said that SoftBank plans to extend up to $ 20 billion in loans to its CEO Masayoshi Son and other executives to invest in the fund, which will help boost the already stalled Funding efforts.
In conversations with SoftBank executives and participating investment employees, these shareholders and other investors, including AllianceBernstein and Odey Asset Management, criticized the loans for the risks and stated that they may be among senior executives and investors. This creates conflicts of interest. In addition to Sun Zhengyi, the borrowers include several members of SoftBank’s board of directors, who also hold senior positions in the Vision Fund. The company has not disclosed details of the arrangement to investors.
SoftBank declined to comment on its conversations with shareholders, but Sun Zhengyi said he knew people were skeptical about his company’s stock. In recent quarters, Sun Zhengyi said at the beginning of each earnings meeting that the group’s revenue and profit figures are meaningless, and emphasized more positive figures, such as the value that SoftBank creates for shareholders, that is, its shareholding value minus The value after removing debt.
Informed sources