SoftBank (SFTB.Y 1.24%), the Japanese tech company that reported $18 billion in losses for its flagship Vision Fund earlier Monday, is losing Alibaba (BABA -0.94%) co-founder Jack Ma as a board member.
In conjunction with reporting fiscal year ending March 31 results, SoftBank said after thirteen years on the board, Ma will resign effective June 25, 2020. Ma’s departure comes at a time when the executive, who retired from Alibaba this past fall, is focusing more on his philanthropic efforts.
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It also ends a long relationship between Ma and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son. Back in 2000 Son invested $20 million in Alibaba before it became the leading eCommerce company in China. SoftBank still has an investment in Alibaba, which has appreciated greatly over the years. Alibaba’s market value stands at $572.65 billion.
SoftBank is nominating three new members to the board including Yoshimitsu Goto, CFO of SoftBank Group, Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of the semiconductor software company Cadence Design Systems, and Yuko Kawamoto, a professor at Waseda Business School. The Cadence Design CEO is also the chairman of Walden International, the venture capital firm. Outside of Ma, SoftBank plans to keep the ten other existing board members. If the nominees get elected, the board will consist of thirteen members.
Separately the tech stock announced plans to buy back 500 billion yen or $4.7 billion in stock by the end of March 2021. That's in addition to the $4.8 billion in shares it announced in March it will repurchase. For its fiscal year ending March 31, SoftBank reported an $18 billion loss in its Vision Fund, driven by declines in its investments in WeWork, the shared office space company, and Uber Technologies. The company is reportedly in talks to sell its stake in T-Mobile US to Deutsche Telekom.
