Japanese multinational conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp recently announced that Alibaba Co-Founder Jack Ma will resign from its board. Jack Ma’s resignation is the latest high-profile departure by an ally of SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son.
Jack Ma resigned from the board as he is pulling back from formal business roles to focus solely on philanthropy. Earlier in September last year, the former English language teacher had retired from the position of Executive Chairman of Alibaba.
Post his departure, SoftBank will propose three new appointments to the board at its Annual General Meeting in June. After the new appointments, the number of board members will expand to 13. These appointments will include SoftBank Group Chief Financial Officer Yoshimoto Goto.
SoftBank will also propose the election of Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of chip design software firm Cadence Design Systems who is also chairman of venture capital firm Walden International, and Yuko Kawamoto, a professor at Waseda Business School as outside directors. Kawamoto will become its only female board member.
That meets a demand from activist investor Elliott Management, which has pressed SoftBank to improve board diversity and also wants a new subcommittee to oversee the investment process at the $100bn Vision Fund.
Recently, Son’s top-down management style has been under increased scrutiny as the fund is expected to report its third consecutive quarterly losses.
Currently, the SoftBank board is largely composed of SoftBank insiders and confidants. It includes Yasir al-Rumayyan, who heads the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund that is the Vision Fund’s biggest outside backer.
Ma’s exit follows the departure of Tadashi Yanai, founder and CEO of Uniqlo parent Fast Retailing, who resigned from the board late last year to focus on his fashion business.
Separately, SoftBank said the board had approved a second 500 billion yen ($4.7 billion) tranche of share purchases, part of a 2.5 trillion yen buyback programme announced in March to prop up the group’s share price as its tech bets flounder.
SoftBank has bought back more than 250 billion yen of its shares at the end of April. It has pledged to sell down or monetise $41 billion of assets to raise cash, with its stake in Alibaba – the portfolio’s most valuable asset – seen as a likely target.
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