SoftBank loses COO, four partners from its $100b Vision Fund

Weerasekera is set to be replaced by Neil Hadley who will be taking up the position in addition to his current duties as chief of staff to Vision Fund CEO Rajeev Misra. In addition to Weerasekera, Kovacs also confirmed the exit of Penny Bodle who used to head Softbank’s global investor relations unit.

The Japanese conglomerate also recently announced the departure of operating partner Avi Golan, who left to become the CEO of AI software firm AnyVision, while a separate company spokesman confirmed that its UK chief risk officer Maria Khan had left in September.

Other departures include those of investing partners Ted Fike and Justin Wilson, who had both resigned to join the Gores Group as senior managing directors. Gores Group is a private equity firm built by American billionaire businessman Alec Gores.

Meanwhile, it was reported that the Vision Fund is pivoting to smaller investments after pouring billions into startups like Uber and WeWork. In total, SoftBank has booked 19 investments for its second Vision Fund worth US$3.5 billion.

“Tremendous liquidity is driving the public stock markets to go up … which makes the late-stage investment environment more difficult,” Vision Fund CEO Rajeev Misra told Nikkei Asia. “We are careful. We are deliberate. We’re taking time.”

Vision Fund 2 is currently entirely self-funded by SoftBank, according to the report. In July last year, when the second fund was announced, SoftBank said the total expected capital for Vision Fund 2 reached about US$108 billion with investors such as Apple, Foxconn, and Microsoft coming onboard.

The developments come after the company recorded an operating loss of around US$13 billion in full-year 2019, pulled down by a US$17.7 billion loss of valuation from investments held by its Vision Fund; SoftBank said that its investments in Uber and WeWork alone accounted for almost US$10 billion of its losses.

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It then went on a post-Covid rally earlier this year, recording a US$12 billion quarterly profit in the first quarter of 2020. More recently, the company inked a deal to sell the UK-based chip designer Arm Holdings to Nvidia for US$40 billion. SoftBank had acquired Arm in 2016 for about US$31.4 billion.