Softbank’s promised CEO and Indian origin executive Nikesh Arora resigned from the Japanese tech company. His resignation came after the Japanese business world’s difficulty in adapting a non-Japanese head and later disagreement with the founder Masayoshi Son.
Arora was one of the highly paid executives in the world but was in serious trouble due to lack of support from shareholders of the company. The Japanese shareholders were generally unhappy about the big salary package to an executive from outside their cultural territory.
The lack of synergy transformed into accusations against the India born executive for conflict of interest, financial misdeal high paid salary etc. A committee set by the company has found such complaints baseless couple of days back and Arora announced his resignation immediately after the report.
Few seasons back, Arora was snatched by Masayoshi Son, the founder of Softbank in 2014 from Google when the former was the fourth important executive of the US company. Son while bringing Arora from Google announced that the Indian will be the future CEO as he himself retires at the age of 60. But recently, Son who founded Softbank as a distribution company has reversed his decision and declared that he will continue as CEO indicating Arora has no place at the top.
It seems that Son was buying the sentiments of the shareholders. The founder who developed a small company into one of the biggest tech and tech financing firm in the world will continue to lead the company when the type of his company’s business need constant inventions not matching his age.
For Softbank, which financed the Chinese titan Alibaba, its search to find the next Alibaba from India or China gets a big setback with Arora’s exit. Already, the Japanese firm has made big investments in Indian internet firms and the new development may lead to loss of momentum in such investment activities.
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