SoftBank Vision Fund CEO Gets 113% Pay Raise Despite Massive Losses
by Sergei KlebnikovTOPLINE
The chief of SoftBank’s embattled Vision Fund, Rajeev Misra, got a huge pay bump last year despite overseeing a record loss of $18 billion after huge bets on companies like Uber and WeWork flopped.
KEY FACTS
The Vision Fund CEO was awarded a 113% raise, earning $15 million in total compensation for the fiscal year ended in March—more than double his pay a year earlier, according to a regulatory filing from SoftBank on Friday.
Misra, a former Deutsche Bank debt trader, has overseen a period of historic losses for SoftBank’s Vision Fund, in which major bets on companies like WeWork, Uber and hotel chain Oyo have all soured.
The Vision Fund reported a record-breaking loss of $18 billion earlier this month, with the overall SoftBank group posting an operating loss of $13 billion.
The Japanese investing conglomerate has been forced to write down its valuation on WeWork from $47 billion in 2019 to just $2.9 billion, while Uber’s valuation has fallen over $10 billion in the past year.
Experts think that against the backdrop of SoftBank’s dismal performance, Misra’s compensation package is certainly “high,” and it’s “hard to see how it could be based on performance,” Morningstar analyst Dan Baker told CNN.
Misra is now the second-highest paid SoftBank employee, behind only Marcelo Claure, the former chairman of telecom giant Sprint who received an annual salary of almost $20 million—a 17% increase from last year.
SoftBank CEO and founder Masayoshi Son, who has a net worth of $23.5 billion according to Forbes, saw his own executive pay fall 9% to $1.9 million.
What to watch for
Whether SoftBank’s $108 billion Vision Fund 2 will still go ahead as planned. The second Vision Fund is up and running, but with only $38 billion from the SoftBank Group itself. Son has said that he won’t try to raise capital from outside investors until companies in Vision Fund 1 start performing better.
Surprising fact
At SoftBank’s earnings presentation earlier this month, Son said that he expects 15 companies in the Vision Fund’s portfolio of 88 companies to go bankrupt. As the investing conglomerate struggles to steady some of its businesses amid the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, SoftBank has so far written down valuations on a total of 47 companies in the Vision Fund.
Further reading
SoftBank’s $18 Billion Loss Has Founder Likening Himself To Jesus Christ (Forbes)
WeWork Cofounder Adam Neumann Sues Onetime Ally SoftBank Over Abandoned $3 Billion Buyout (Forbes)
Coronavirus Has ‘Warren Buffett Of Japan’ On The Ropes As SoftBank Takes Dive (Forbes)