The man who made $1.4 billion a day, lost $70 billion and became a billionaire again
The Japanese billionaire and Softbank founder Masayoshi Son also happens to be the person who has the highest ever financial loss in history
Moneycontrol News
It seems everything comes at a price, and so did Masayoshi Son’s wealth.
In an interview with Bloomberg on the David Rubenstein show, Japanese tech titan Masayoshi Son revealed that although he ended up making a lot of money, he also lost a lot on the way.
At the height of the dot-com bubble, Masayoshi Son’s worth was surging by USD 10 billion per week, which comes to around USD 1.4 billion per day.
This means that in present-day prices with that amount of money he could afford to buy 41 Audi A8Ls (worth Rs 9.15 crore) every hour or 23 bungalows worth an average of Rs 400 crore each in Lutyen's area of Delhi every day or over 31,000 kilograms of gold in a day.
At that time he was also the richest person alive.
But Son’s fairytale didn’t last long. After the dot-com bubble burst, his company Softbank’s shares plunged 75 percent in two months and was 93 percent lower by the end of 2000.
The business almost went bankrupt and Son ended up losing USD 70 billion, the highest ever recorded financial loss for a person in history.
“Somehow, I survived,” Son said in the interview on The David Rubenstein show.
What ended up saving the Softbank founder was his foresight
Also Read: 7 key things to know about SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund
To pursue that vision, Son decided to take over a mobile carrier, and after several hurdles managed to acquire Vodafone Japan in 2006, and that became the revolutionary deal that turned SoftBank around.
Ever since, Son has been on a rise.
Son, who became a billionaire in 2013, is presently worth USD 15.8 billion and is among the 100 richest people in the world.
Son currently invests billions in tech companies each year, and he likes betting on the future by investing in companies that are doing work in the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and robotics. He recently promised US president Donald Trump of a USD 50 billion fresh investment in Silicon Valley companies.
His wealth can presently buy 280 million barrels of crude oil.
In India, Masayoshi Son has promised Prime Minister Narendra Modi of a USD 10 billion investment from Softbank's “Vision Fund” into the technology sector and has already acquired stakes in Paytm, Flipkart, Snapdeal, Ola and Grofers, among others.
Son's obsession with the future has also made him lay out a 300-year plan for Softbank.
“There are good times and bad times but SoftBank is always there,” said Masayoshi Son during his visit to New Delhi in December 2016.
