Amid Misra’s exit, the company’s Chief Financial Officer, Yoshimitsu Goto, had high praise for the former co-CEO
By Vishnu Kaimal
Rajeev Misra, the co-CEO of SoftBank’s Vision Fund, will be exiting the firm. The Japanese investment firm stated that Alex Clavel will be the sole CEO of SoftBank Investment Advisers and SoftBank Global Advisors. The decision was announced during the company’s second-quarter earnings call.
Amid Misra’s exit, the company’s Chief Financial Officer, Yoshimitsu Goto, had high praise for the former co-CEO saying that Misra has been one of the “great non-Japanese friends of mine, and I want to learn continuously from him and appreciate his contribution so far.”
In 2022, the SoftBank Group decided that Misra would step down from his position of Corporate Officer and Executive Vice President while continuing to oversee the Vision Fund. Misra was also one of the key architects of the initial Vision Fund along with Masayoshi Son. He was one of the early bettors on lucrative behemoths like Alibaba Group Holding and diversified his portfolio by investing in startups all across the U.S., China, and India.
Goto left no doubt during the post-earnings call that Misra’s role in the company is over. In fact, the CFO, made it clear that Misra will be concentrating on running his very own fund separate from SoftBank. “Does that mean complete goodbye to Rajiv? I don’t think so. I think we are going to keep communicating with him in some way, and I am sure he is going to visit Japan from time to time. I will keep getting in touch with him, but as a management team, for example, that kind of relation and role is over,” Goto said.
Misra joined SoftBank as head of strategic finance in 2014 before setting up the Vision Fund in 2017. He is a career banker who received a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and a Master of Science in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from the MIT’s Sloan School of Management. His exit marks the end of a near ten-year run, with seven impressive years at the helm of the fund which saw some historic highs and lows. Details about Misra’s new independent fund are still being kept under wraps.