Name of the Son

21 June 2016 By Peter Thal Larsen Follow @Peter_TL

Heir apparent Nikesh Arora is quitting after Masayoshi Son opted to keep the reins at the Japanese tech group. In just two years, the ex-Googler was paid over $200 mln and spent billions. The succession mess leaves SoftBank and its mercurial founder as hard to read as ever.

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SoftBank said on June 21 that Nikesh Arora, its president and chief operating officer and heir apparent to founder Masayoshi Son, was leaving.

The Japanese tech and telecom group said Arora’s resignation was caused by “difference of expected timelines” over succession. Son intends to keep leading the group “for the time being, while Arora wished to start taking over the lead in a few years’ time”, SoftBank said.

The announcement came a day after a special committee of SoftBank’s board of directors dismissed allegations against Arora raised by a U.S. law firm on behalf of unnamed investors.

Arora, a former high-flying Google executive, joined SoftBank in 2014, and was named as president in May 2015. He was paid $138 million in the year to March 2015, and a further $73 million in the most recent financial year.

Arora will remain as an adviser to SoftBank. He has sold his 9.5 million shares in the company to Son.

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