SoftBank Group was founded by Sun Zhengyi in 1981. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

In the first ten years after the company was founded, the Internet had not yet been born, so its business was mainly to invest in operators in the telecommunications industry. During that time, the company's shareholding structure was very stable, and Sun Zhengyi's shareholding ratio reached as much as 44% at its peak.

With the advent of the Internet era in 94, after 95, SoftBank entered the Internet investment in a big way, and invested in Yang Zhiyuan's Yahoo in 96 and Ahri Baba in 99, all of which were later SoftBank's proud achievements.

But since then, due to the bubble and the demand for sky-high funds, SoftBank has begun to increase the capital introduced into traditional investment banks to consolidate its scale and market, and Sun Zhengyi's shareholding has also fallen all the way, and now only 27% - from 44% to 27% - a simple calculation shows that in the process, SoftBank has increased its net capital by at least half of its valuation of cash flow.

And with the success of capital increase and investment in successive years, as of 2005, the equity assets of all SoftBank Group's investment projects have reached a scale of more than 30 billion US dollars - the peak once soared to a peak of nearly 40 billion US dollars, but later with Sun Zhengyi's largest investment in 04 years, the absolute control of Legendary Entertainment, the stock price fell, and the total asset market value of SoftBank fell below the red line of 35 billion US dollars again.

However, Sun Zhengyi still firmly controls the company's business decision-making power, just as Gu Cheng firmly controlled Legendary Entertainment before he sang a double reed with Quan Shunyu.

The only way Sun Zhengyi maintained control was to not accept money from other tech investment funds, such as the Silicon Valley venture capital community, in those years, and instead focused on absorbing money from traditional investment banks that were not very knowledgeable in the Internet and high-tech industries.

Because the newly recruited major shareholders do not understand the Internet and software industries, they are not very likely to interfere with Sun Zhengyi's business and investment decisions. As long as Sun Zhengyi can always hand over the performance answer sheet that satisfies them, they will always entrust their voting rights to Sun Zhengyi with peace of mind, and Sun Zhengyi will vote for whoever he says.

After 99 years, there are mainly two external shareholders who have been brought in by Sun Zhengyi in the past five years, and they are currently the second and third largest shareholders of SoftBank Group: Fuso Trust Bank, which holds 14.6% of the company's shares, and JP Morgan Chase, which holds 9.8% of the shares.

(Note: At this time in the book, there is no "Fuso Trust Bank", but it should be Chuo Mitsui Trust Bank (and its asset trust bank) and Sumitomo Trust Bank, which were merged in 2011 to form Fuso Trust Bank.) But in fact, as early as a few years ago, these banks had strategic cooperation in terms of operation. In the book, for the sake of convenience, it is stated in advance as a force, and behind it is Mitsui. Specifically, it's not popular science, Mitsui Sumitomo Bank can have a bunch of information on Baidu, I don't know the word water. ）

Both Fuso Trust and JPMorgan Chase are representatives of "old money".

In the United States, Manhattan is notoriously unaware of its lack of access to high-tech companies -- that's the territory of California-based venture capitalists, and the old Wall Street antiques don't understand it. At least historically, this was the case before the rise of East Coast tech up-and-comers like Zuckerberg.

However, these old-school chaebols are reluctant to completely give up the benefits of the new technology industry, so they would rather find a more secure way, such as through a relatively stable capital dealer like Sun Zhengyi, and then invest in specific software industry projects. In this way, Sun Zhengyi invested in 20 projects, lost 19, and left one to make dozens of times a profit, and the risk was diluted a lot in the financial reports of Mitsui and Morgan.

Over the years, Sun Zhengyi has come over like this.

His more than 27%, plus 14.6% of Fuso Trust and 9.8% of JPMorgan Chase, add up to about 52% of SoftBank's equity, and grasping these three major shareholders is enough to influence the company's decision-making.

……

It is precisely because he has always been smooth sailing, and now that he is being questioned, Sun Zhengyi is so surprised and annoyed. He shouted at the innocent female secretary without being angry: "Who stopped our negotiations with Tengyun?!"

"It's Director Nishikawa, and Director Akira Cockett, and they all want you to be cautious. The female secretary reported the answer that Sun Zhengyi least wanted to hear.

"Xichuan-kun, how could it be?" Sun Zhengyi was slightly incredulous.

Mr. Nishikawa is the voice of Mitsui Zaibatsu's interests in SoftBank, a former executive of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and a member of the company's board of directors.

Until 2003, he was the director of international business at JPMorgan Chase's investment banking division, and was later sent by JPMorgan Chase after further increasing its capital in SoftBank.

This is Sun Zhengyi's consistent hardcore ally, and he has never paid attention to the details of investment decisions, as long as the company has no financial fraud.

"I'm going to hold a board meeting—oh no, I mean, I'm going to bring them in first, they should all be in Tokyo, right?" Sun Zhengyi's heart was slightly confused, and he almost said the wrong thing.

"It's all here, I'll arrange it. "If the female secretary is granted amnesty, she immediately arranges a meeting.

Sun Zhengyi understands that if you directly prepare for the board meeting, it will take a few days to prepare, and second, after some words are directly poked in front of all major shareholders, it will be difficult to have room for manoeuvre.

It's better to appease it in private.

Soon, the female secretary prepared the conference room and invited two directors who were also obviously waiting to meet Sun Zheng.

As soon as they met, Sun Zhengyi brewed his expression, and begged for support with a smile on his face:

"Xichuan-kun, Android, do you have any concerns recently? Why do you block my further capital increase in Tengyun? Tengyun is a very potential Huaxia Internet company, as long as we have our financial support, they will definitely be able to stabilize their position in Huaxia's social product market, and make achievements on the future artificial intelligence content platform. ”

Mr. Nishikawa and Android Cockert are both born in the 50s, about the same age as Sun Zhengyi, and are now in their early fifties. In the investment world, this age happens to be the golden age, with enough experience and a steady style, but not too complacent.

In the face of Sun Zhengyi's eagerness, these partners, who have supported him unconditionally for many years, are also a little difficult to speak.

What should be said is that the British don't have as much business etiquette as Asians, so Android spoke first:

"Sun, we all feel that your investment decisions in the past two years have been a little impulsive, and you often spend your money on companies and businesses that have no possibility of long-term returns. Isn't this incident too risky? Tengyun's current market value in the Hong Kong stock market is obviously not worth this price, and even if we accept 80 percent of the current value of Hong Kong stocks as a mortgage to lend money, there will be great risks in the future. This is a company in a recession!"

Faced with the attack of his allies, Sun Zhengyi was slightly stunned, and immediately tried to persuade:

"How can it be in a period of recession? Do you want to say that they have just been overtaken by YY network technology in the Huaxia social software market? That is just a phenomenon that only exists this year, and it does not mean that Tengyun has been outdated. Moreover, Tengyun's share price has fallen by about 15% this year, indicating that the capital market is not optimistic about its prospects.

It's a good time for us to come in, you have to trust my judgment, I'm a professional in this area. If a discerning company can see that it's on the rise, and it's very solid and has a good cash flow, who's going to ask for our money? Isn't it just the best way to get the best rate of return? Think about the ...... when we first approached Yahoo.

Sun Zhengyi said as he spoke, and couldn't help but take out the greatest transaction of his life again, giving an example of qualifications.

In previous years, whenever he talked about this, he was always able to suppress internal dissent.

"If a successful case is not convincing enough, then add another one, and turn the example of Ahri Baba out and put it in the dragon gate array."

It's a pity that when he mentions it again, his most unexpected ally is in trouble.

Nishikawa-kun, the spokesman for the interests of the Mitsui chaebol, spoke: "Sun San, please pay attention to the fact that the investment in Legendary Entertainment led by you has caused the company to lose nearly $4 billion! The market value of $4 billion has evaporated like this!"

Sun Zhengyi was speechless for a moment, and he couldn't find a rebuttal within ten seconds.

Legendary Entertainment is indeed a stain on his life's investment prediction.

He didn't expect that a country's netizens would have such low loyalty to the successful online game providers that once brought them great joy and user stickiness. Once a new online game company appears, it bets on the right game, or even just a company that has never done online games, with the help of a platform that crosses the circle to compete, it can pull tens of millions of paying users away.

However, he always thought that he was not to blame - other investors on the NASDAQ were also so overestimating the Huaxia online game companies at that time, including before the stock price crash of Legendary Entertainment, some people tried to use the valuation of Zhengtu Network or Perfect Time and Space (although the perfect time and space of this time and space did not make a "perfect world", because Zulong Studio had been dug by Gu Cheng) to play the drum and pass the flowers, blowing bubbles for retail investors to take over.

He was just wrong that he didn't expect the collapse to come so quickly.

However, Nishikawa-kun didn't wait for him to sort out his quibble thoughts, and immediately threw over the second bomb: "What's more, don't say that you also threw out so many shares of Ahri Baba in order to absorb Legendary Entertainment, and gave up the opportunity to use Yahoo Huaxia's shares to grab more Ahri Baba shares in exchange!"

Look at how much Ahri Baba has grown in the past year or so? How have the number of Taobao stores, the number of online shoppers, and the transaction volume increased three or five times a year in the Chinese market? After Ma Feng announced in a high-profile manner that he would cooperate with Gu Cheng on the Ahri Cloud project, because of Gu Cheng's recent outlook on the future of the artificial intelligence field, how many shareholders were lured by Gu Cheng's pie and raised Ahri's stock price by how much?

Nishikawa only has the last sentence of the conclusion and can't bear to say it directly: You have lost the trust of the Mitsui chaebol in your vision!

"We all agree that Tengyun is no longer YY's opponent, in Tengyun's most advantageous and pioneering field, they have all been defeated, how can you expect YY to defeat YY in a nascent market where they are already backward and have no foundation, and the technology and data base are one year ahead of them?

Sun Sang, you are fighting for your own face! We think you have been carried away by anger!"