We have seen how Jack Ma has had a huge influence on the Chinese entrepreneurship market as well as the hold of Chinese e-commerce because of AliExpress and its related companies. However, it must be noted that Jack Ma is also a board member in SoftBank which is the leading investment company in the world which recently bought majority stakes in WeWork. Now, we know that there were mere hours left before we were getting to know about the earnings call from SoftBank and it was estimated that they are on track to post record losses due to the Coronavirus and related problems.
But we have even more breaking news which is that Jack Ma has resigned from the SoftBank board and the financial losses seem to be the main reason behind this move. Also, along with news of Jack Ma’s resignation, SoftBank revealed that the Japanese company is preparing to double the money it has spent on repurchasing its own shares.
Now, there is a history behind Jack Ma’s inclusion in the SoftBank board as well. It is known that SoftBank Chief Executive Masayoshi Son had invested $20 million in Alibaba long time and that capital grew to become $100 billion due to the rise of Alibaba in the Chinese market. It is known that the funds from SoftBank’s investment in Alibaba group helped them “transform itself from a telecom company into the world’s largest and most powerful tech investor”.
Since then, it is known that “Mr. Son has pumped enormous amounts of capital into cutting-edge and often risky start-ups, companies that he believes have the potential to effectively monopolize entire industries”. However, we also know that many of them have turned out to be riskier than profitable such as WeWork, Uber, Airbnb and others which have made a name for good or worse.
