Masayoshi Son, the risk-addicted billionaire who built Japan’s SoftBank into a global internet powerhouse, is a man who moves fast to seize whatever he has set his eyes on.
Less than a month after Britain voted to leave the EU, Mr Son clinched a deal to acquire UK chip designer Arm Holdings for ￡24.3bn. It was the largest Asian takeover of a British company. But the audacious deal was not enough to satisfy the 59-year-old known as Masa, who enjoys his reputation for having big and crazy ideas.
After the summer had passed, Mr Son was off to Riyadh to meet Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s powerful deputy crown prince, to launch a $100bn technology fund. Armed with fresh funding power, Mr Son was next spotted in New York, forging ties with President-elect Donald Trump with a $50bn pledge to invest in US start-ups.