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SoftBank President Nikesh Arora to Step Down
- mathattack 10y agoInteresting. He seemed uniquely suited to do the job, with a commercial background in both old telecom and new cloud. Perhaps this just didn't translate to picking companies to buy.
- denzil_correa 10y agoThis is still behind a paywall. You can search for the WSJ title and follow a search engine link to bypass this.
- mathattack 10y agoThanks. That's what I copy/pasted, but I guess the link refreshes.
- pc86 10y agoThere is a web link under the article that achieves the same result.
- denzil_correa 10y agoWhich link? I am curious.
- kartD 10y agoCan we really judge his investments just yet? There haven't been any exits/bankruptcies just yet (apart from Housing.com) , so it's too early to judge. And it looks like he left over disagreements with how soon he would takeover from Masayoshi Son.
- mathattack 10y agoMy (uninformed) read was that was allowing him to save face. You are right, though. It can take a while to determine effectiveness of acquisitions. Perhaps it was performance on the large ones? It could also be cultural. It's very hard for foreigners to run Japanese companies, even iconoclastic ones.
- RaSoJo 10y agoLet us not forget about the allegations of malpractice, even though he has been given a clean chit by an "internal" investigation. There might be more to it than meets the eye. http://qz.com/711829/softbank-says-an-internal-investigation-found-coo-nikesh-arora-has-done-nothing-wrong/ http://qz.com/711829/softbank-says-an-internal-investigation...
- mathattack 10y agoYes. At the very least it's an angry investor. Even if you're in the right, it's hard to stave off angry owners. (They are after all, the owners)
- shaqbert 10y agoTypical case for botched leadership transition. Arora held executive positions at Google, Deutsche Telecom, and in a fund mgmt group, is the poster boy of a leader Softbank could wish for. Don't think he would have come over without a clearly defined date for taking over the helm. Interesting to see which self-respecting exec would be willing to follow into Arora's footsteps. I guess we see a B-player puppet so Masayoshi can continue to hold on.
- perseusprime11 10y agoI have a different takeaway - Leaders from Google like Nikesh Arora, Marissa Mayer, Vic Gundotra don't succeed outside of Google because Google has a very unique culture and team environment, and success does not come from individual leaders at Google - it comes from teams.
- w1ntermute 10y agoA counterexample is Sheryl Sandberg, who was Google's Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations from 2001 to 2008.
- mapgrep 10y agoThat is an excellent counterexample. She seems to have been instrumental at Facebook in building up revenue and transitioning to mobile.
- perseusprime11 10y agoI like this counter example. I also think Sheryl knows that she can be the kingmaker and not the king to be successful. She is a driving force behind Mark Zuckerberg's success. Of all the folks mentioned, I put Sheryl in the rare breed category who has very high emotional intelligence.
- w1ntermute 10y ago> I also think Sheryl knows that she can be the kingmaker and not the king to be successful. Another example of this is Uber's Ryan Graves. He was Uber's original CEO, but was replaced in December 2010 by Travis Kalanick[0]. At that point, Uber's success was by no means ensured, but Graves stuck with it, and now he's a billionaire anyway[1]. 0: https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/22/uber-ceo-super-pumped-about-being-replaced-by-founder/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/22/uber-ceo-super-pumped-abou... 1: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/03/02/uber-billionaires-garrett-camp-ryan-graves http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/03/02/uber-billio...
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- grizzles 10y agoOn Twitter, Nikesh is spinning it as a positive, no big deal. He says: I still love Masa, etc. So maybe it worked out well for him. Softbanks stock has declined somewhat since he is reported to have bought $487 million worth to become Softbanks 2nd largest shareholder. If he managed to unwind that transaction and somehow break even then he has done very well. That would mean he would have essentially freerolled any upside in the company's share price over the last 2 years, if it had rised. Pretty interesting because on the face of it, it would look like Softbank had him over a barrel.
- cominventor 10y agohttp://www.vccircle.com/news/finance/2016/04/22/nikesh-aroras-india-deals-softbank-investors-are-seeking-probe http://www.vccircle.com/news/finance/2016/04/22/nikesh-arora...