Again, He Puts His Money on the Internet
TOKYO — If Masayoshi Son, president of Softbank Corp., has one outstanding quality, it is his ability to defy the skeptics.
Japan's most famous Internet entrepreneur has been written off countless times since he built his broadband business empire from a one-room software distributor in a wooden office building.
But each time Softbank seemed near collapse, Son rode the next business trend, launching ever more daring deals and confounding his critics.
His latest venture -- the $3.1-billion acquisition of Japan Telecom Co. from U.S. private equity firm Ripplewood Holdings -- is the biggest test yet of whether Son has the ability to transform Softbank from an opportunistic investor into a serious operator.
True to form, the irrepressible Son characterizes the acquisition in grandiose terms, saying it is "the next step" in his quest to change the telecommunications landscape.
"We want to offer a new type of broadband service," he said as he announced the deal last month.
But Son has shown little patience for expanding businesses, particularly those operating in mature markets. Instead, Son's main strength is his sharp nose for investment opportunities and his unflinching confidence in his own vision.
In the last two decades, Softbank has stumbled in and out of numerous investments, some very profitable, others duds.
Initially, Son, who was briefly dubbed the Bill Gates of Japan during the dot-com era, had his eye on PC-related businesses. These included Ziff-Davis, the computer titles publisher, which Softbank bought for $2.1 billion in 1994, and Comdex, the computer industry trade show organizer, for which it paid $800 million the next year.
With the rise of the Internet, he bought into Web-oriented start-ups, such as Yahoo Inc. and E-Trade Group Inc., and ventured into broadcasting.
In 1997, he emerged with egg on his face when he was forced to sell a 21.4% stake he and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. had quietly obtained in TV Asahi Corp. in just three months at no profit after staunch resistance from the country's established broadcasters.
That investment looked good, however, compared with Ziff-Davis, which Softbank eventually sold for $814 million, and Kingston Technologies, which it acquired in 1996 for $1.58 billion and sold three years later for $450 million.
