8chan/8kun QResearch Posts (3)
#12750039 at 2021-01-29 02:11:13 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #16277: The 'Sometimes People Have To Be Shown' Edition
Masayoshi Son Rewards Top Execs With Massive Loans To Help Pump SoftBank Shares
With retail traders asserting their dominance over equity markets in a way the world hasn't seen before (thanks to Wall Street Bets and its legions of rabid users hell-bent on punching hedge-fund shorts in the nose by taking GME to the moon), it's worth looking back on an incident - which only unfolded few months ago - where Zero Hedge called out SoftBank for using an options-trading strategy that was partly responsible for driving huge gains in the Nasdaq (which, in turn, bolstered SoftBank's bottom line) (and, in turn, bolstering both SoftBank and many of its top positions).
SoftBank ended up making billions via what we termed "the biggest gamma squeeze" in history. But now that a similar squeeze has made GME the markets story of the year, and retail traders are once again taking over the market, SoftBank has shared another piece of the puzzle in its annual report.
As the FT reports thanks to an incentive package that was approved a year ago (last February), four top SoftBank executives are sitting on a collective gain that could be as large as $1.2BN after they were each loaned hundreds of millions of dollars to buy the company's (fast-rising) shares.
Last year, SoftBank granted a total of $600MM in loans to four top executives: Rajeev Misra, head of SoftBank's infamous Vision Fund, Marcelo Claure, currently the head of SoftBank Group International, Katsunori Sago, SoftBank's chief strategy officer, and Ken Miyauchi, recently promoted to president and CEO (Nikkei targeted Miyauchi in a glowing profile published Thursday).
Since then, three of these men (including, most famously, Misra) have stepped down from SoftBank's board, alleviating the company of the responsibility for disclosing these compensation schemes. As one "expert" pointed out, not only is it unusual (if perhaps not illegal) for a company to refuse to disclose these compensation packages, in Japan, hefty executive pay packages are frowned upon, which is one reason why SoftBank might not want to reveal them.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/masayoshi-son-rewards-top-execs-massive-loans-help-pump-softbank-shares
#11046010 at 2020-10-13 02:29:29 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #14128: Time Dilation Emergent Probably
SoftBank Vision Fund preparing blank cheque acquisition company
SoftBank Group Corp's 9984.T Vision Fund is preparing to launch a blank cheque acquisition company and will outline plans in the next two weeks, a source familiar with the matter said, following similar reported comments by the fund's head Rajeev Misra. SoftBank is looking to attract outside investment and may put its own capital in the vehicle whose size is undetermined, the person said, declining to be identified as the information is not public.
Misra revealed plans for the vehicle at a conference on Monday hosted by billionaire Michael Milken's think-tank the Milken Institute, media reported. SoftBank declined to comment but Misra's remarks were reported by U.S. media. The launch would see SoftBank joining the fashion for special purpose acquisition companies (SPAC) - shell vehicles that raise money in an initial public offering (IPO) before merging with a private company.
Such vehicles are being used to take a record number of companies public, bypassing the traditional IPO.
SoftBank is flush with cash as Chief Executive Masayoshi Son sells down core assets, leading to speculation over his future investment plans.
The group has been biding its time since efforts to raise capital for a successor to its $100 billion Vision Fund ran aground following poor performance at the fund. The first fund invested in many of the highest profile late-stage startups using its overwhelming firepower to push for faster growth and shaking up the venture capital industry.
SoftBank has been investing on a smaller scale with its own money via a second fund amid a lack of larger targets and as the funding environment is dampened by the COVID-19 pandemic. The group has used its mounting cash reserves to take positions in listed U.S. tech firms and has a growing number of portfolio companies going public after the IPO window reopened.
SoftBank's shares rose as much as 1.6% in morning Tokyo trading before falling 0.6%. Shares are up more than 160% since March lows.
https://www.reuters.com/article/softbank-group-vision-fund/update-4-softbank-vision-fund-preparing-blank-cheque-acquisition-company-source-idUSL4N2H33XN
#4769716 at 2019-01-15 23:24:48 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #6087: Continue To Build The MAP Edition
The most powerful person in Silicon Valley
(1of 2)
Billionaire Masayoshi Son-not Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or Mark Zuckerberg-has the most audacious vision for an AI-powered utopia where machines control how we live. And he's spending hundreds of billions of dollars to realize it. Are you ready to live in Masa World?
It's a bright September morning in San Carlos, California, and Masayoshi Son, chairman of SoftBank, is throwing me off schedule. I'd come, as he had, to meet with the people he's tapped to run the Vision Fund, his $100 billion bet on the future of, well, everything. After almost four decades of building SoftBank into a telecom conglomerate, Son, an inveterate dealmaker, launched this unprecedented venture two years ago to back startups that he believes are driving a new wave of digital upheaval. He has staked everything on its success-his company, his reputation, his fortune. We'd both arrived with the same basic question: Where is this massive vehicle heading? But because I wasn't the one footing the 12-figure allowance, I understood that I'd be the one to wait. In the hubbub of Son's visit, my 9 a.m. meeting gets rescheduled multiple times until it's set for 4:30 p.m. When I finally arrive at the Vision Fund's offices, just off California's Highway 101, I'm struck by how mundane they are. Son is known for big, showy statements. He reportedly paid $117 million for a home in Woodside in 2013, the highest price ever in the U.S. This glass and concrete building, on the other hand, could be found in any part of suburban America. The room where I wait is spartan. There is an empty desk in one corner, and a conference table with a fake-wood veneer. I try to read the pale gray scribbles on a whiteboard, hoping they might shed light on what happens in this place, but the surface has been too well scrubbed. The interior glass walls of the conference room have been lined with a white, papery substance that turns anyone on the other side into apparitions.
Finally, Rajeev Misra, CEO of the entity overseeing the Vision Fund, rushes into the room, smiling broadly and apologizing profusely. Misra, who has flown in from London for these meetings, looks exhausted but jacked up, as if he's gotten a shot of adrenaline. Son has this effect on people. It is an exceptionally busy day at the Vision Fund. Not only is the big boss in from Tokyo, but unbeknownst to me, the team is preparing to announce billions of dollars in new investments: a $1 billion round for Oyo, the Indian hospitality startup; $800 million split evenly between Compass and OpenDoor, two real estate disrupters;' $100 million for Loggi, a Brazilian delivery startup. It also would lead a $3 billion round in Chinese startup ByteDance, which makes several popular news and entertainment apps, including TikTok. At the same time, Son and his partners are in the midst of launching a second $100 billion fund, with plans already underway to raise an additional $45 billion investment from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia'-the Vision Fund's primary backer. Neither Misra nor I knew it then, but this relationship would soon get complicated.
"So what do you want to know?" Misra says, clapping his hands loudly. "You want the road map? I'll start from 10,000 feet. . . ." On the surface, the story of the Vision Fund is about money. How could it not be? The numbers are eye-popping. The Vision Fund's minimum investment in startups is $100 million, and in just over two years since its October 2016 debut, it's committed more than $70 billion. Son, 61 years old, will also back companies he likes via SoftBank itself or other means: He's put some $20 billion-and counting-into Uber and WeWork through a combination of financial instruments. (Son's machinations have always been highly complex and it's not worth getting lost in the minutiae; regardless of the means, the deals are at his behest.) His big-money bets agitate the venture capitalists who have long inhabited the dry stretch of lowlands between San Francisco and San Jose, a place where any fund over $1 billion was head-turning as recently as three years ago. Turns out, nobody likes competing with a bottomless-pocketed behemoth. "Have you seen the movie Ghostbusters? It's like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man tramping around," one VC tells me before I visit SoftBank. Then he asks me to ask Misra the question everyone in town wants to know: Who is Son investing in next?
https://www.fastcompany.com/90285552/the-most-powerful-person-in-silicon-valley