Report: Rajeev Misra, head of the $100B Vision Fund, is accused of sabotaging other SoftBank execs for career advancement; Misra and SoftBank deny allegations
Misra, already admitting in interviews that the fund made many investment mistakes, now has to defend his conduct rather than just its returns — and Masayoshi Son must decide how much political capital to spend shielding him.
If the pattern holds, the accusations mark the start of Misra's long marginalization — he eventually steps back from SoftBank while securing $6B+ for his own fund and later exits his Vision Fund co-CEO role entirely, leaving the fund's identity decoupled from its founding architect.
The trend: SoftBank is steadily recentralizing power around Masayoshi Son, with the Vision Fund's most powerful lieutenant progressively stripped of board seats, operational control, and finally his role.
This story is bonkers, but also a textbook example of the so called Dark Arts and the role intelligence firms, law firms, and the media play https://www.wsj.com/...
You see why Softbank's investments have been so bad, if someone like this can rise there. When you see performance failing, look at the culture. https://www.wsj.com/...
“He succeeded, in part, by striking at two of his main rivals inside SoftBank with a dark-arts campaign of personal sabotage.” There are a lot worse things than not working for SoftBank https://www.wsj.com/...
Mahabharat in Masa-land: this is intense! How Rajeev Misra at @SoftBank apparently used underhand tactics to sabotage the careers of his rival colleagues @nikesharora & @AlokSama https://www.wsj.com/...
Softbank is fully in the Tyson Zone: “The tactics included planting negative news stories about them, concocting a shareholder campaign to pressure SoftBank to fire them and even attempting to lure one of them into a “honey trap” of sexual blackmail” https://www.wsj.com/...
Rajeev Misra's targets were Nikesh Arora, who was once heir apparent to Mr. Son as chief executive, and Alok Sama, a deputy to Mr. Arora who grew to work closely with Mr. Son on big deals. Mr. Arora left SoftBank in 2016; Mr. Sama left last April. https://www.wsj.com/...
Fascinating dive into the goings on at SoftBank's Vision Fund. Rajeev Misra runs one of the world's largest tech funds. He got there in part thanks to a dark-arts campaign against two internal rivals. https://www.wsj.com/... via @WSJ
Vision Fund chief planted negative news stories on internal rivals, concocted a shareholder campaign to pressure SoftBank to fire them, attempted to lure one into a honey trap of sexual blackmail, according to people familiar and documents seen by The WSJ https://www.wsj.com/...
👀 now this is partnership dynamics: Mr. Benedetti sent a team to Tokyo to set up the so-called honey trap, in which one or more women would lure Mr. Arora to a hotel room rigged with cameras in an attempt to obtain compromising images https://www.wsj.com/...
Scaling AUM is all fun and games until you realize it has also irreversibly scaled the amount of strife and politicking within the firm. https://www.wsj.com/...
This is insane for Softbank. Look, we've all had beef with a colleague. But who here has had “I'm going to honey trap you with hookers in Tokyo” level beef? https://www.wsj.com/...
If this was on Succession, I'd roll my eyes and say this would never happen. “Mr. Benedetti sent a team to Tokyo to set up the so-called honey trap, in which one or more women would lure Mr. Arora to a hotel room rigged with cameras in an attempt to obtain compromising images.” h…