Jack Ma, Executive Chairman, Alibaba Group Holding, People’s Republic of China; Member of the Board of Trustees, World Economic Forum, speaking during the session, Enabling eCommerce: Small Enterprises, Global Players, at the Annual Meeting 2018 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 24, 2018. Copyright by World Economic Forum / Ciaran McCrickard
In the fiscal year ending March 31, SoftBank posted an annual operating loss of $12.7 billion, its first annual loss in 15 years. It had forecasted that its $100 billion Vision Fund would lose $16.5 billion. During the same period in 2019, SoftBank had a profit of $19.6 billion, The New York Times said in a report.
Ma’s resignation will be effective on June 25, when new appointments will be made at the 40th annual general meeting of shareholders. A vote will take place for the proposed election of Yoshimitsu Goto, Lip-Bu Tan and Yuko Kawamoto as new board directors.
SoftBank’s record losses stemmed from its Vision Fund, which lost $10 billion on investments in WeWork and Uber. The fund invested $75 billion investment in 88 startups, which were valued at $69.6 billion at the end of March, according to a New York Times report on Monday (May 18).
The conglomerate blamed the economic fallout triggered by the coronavirus pandemic for its $7.5 billion in losses on other tech investments. SoftBank also lost its investment in satellite operator OneWeb, which filed for bankruptcy in late March.
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In April, SoftBank indicated that it was planning to sell down $41 billion in assets, which could include part of its Alibaba holdings, according to the NYT report. SoftBank is also looking to buy back $23 billion of its own shares.
SoftBank also announced on Monday (May 18) that it was planning to spend $4.7 billion to buy back the shares by the end of March 2021.
We Work’s former CEO Adam Neumann has filed a lawsuit against SoftBank for backing out of a promised $3 billion investment.
