【英语财经】软银总裁阿罗拉自掏近5亿美元购买公司股票 Arora seeks to signal his commitment with $483m ‘personal b ...

Nikesh Arora, president of SoftBank, has said he will buy a breathtaking Y60bn ($483m) worth of shares in the Japanese telecoms and internet group, in a sign of his commitment to the company as the handpicked successor to billionaire Masayoshi Son.

Mr Arora’s “personal bet” comes just months after Mr Son, who founded the group, promoted the India-born former Google executive to the company’s No 2 position and anointed him heir apparent.

“My past year with the SoftBank Group has been very rewarding,” Mr Arora said in a statement yesterday. “As a measure of my commitment, I have decided to take a personal bet on the SoftBank Group.”

The scale of his purchase is significant, even for the man who was Google’s highest-paid executive with estimated annual pay of about $50m. The amount is nearly four times the Y16.56bn Mr Arora received from SoftBank for the past fiscal year that ended in March.

“This is a large transaction for me, and involves taking an enormous risk in my life once again,” Mr Arora said.

It would make Mr Arora the biggest individual shareholder after Mr Son, who owns a 19 per cent stake, according to Bloomberg data.

Since being poached by SoftBank in July last year, Mr Arora has led a flurry of investments in tech start-ups, including a $627m injection in Indian online marketplace Snapdeal and $1bn investment in South Korean online retailer Coupang.

Mr Son has increasingly relied on Mr Arora to drive the company’s overseas growth at a time when SoftBank has struggled to turn round lossmaking Sprint, the US wireless network it acquired for $22bn in 2013.

The purchase will be carried out over the next six months and will give Mr Arora a stake of about 0.7 per cent, based on SoftBank’s closing share price of Y7,477 yesterday.

软银(SoftBank)总裁尼克什?阿罗拉(Nikesh Arora)表示，他个人将以600亿日元（合4.83亿美元）的巨额资金买入这家日本电信与互联网集团的股份。这体现了他作为精心挑选出的亿万富翁孙正义(Masayoshi Son)继任者对公司的承诺。

阿罗拉投下“个人赌注”几个月前，软银创始人孙正义把这位印度出生的谷歌(Google)前高管提升为公司第二号人物，并指定他为自己的继任者。

“过去一年在软银集团的经历让我受益匪浅，”阿罗拉昨日发表声明称。“我决定对软银集团投下个人赌注，这表明了我的承诺。”

即便对这位曾经是收入最高的谷歌高管（年度薪酬约5000万美元）而言，这次购股的规模也非常大，几乎是他在截至3月的上一个财年里从软银所获165.6亿日元收入的四倍。

“这对我而言是一笔大交易，涉及在我的人生中再次承担巨大风险，”阿罗拉说。

彭博(Bloomberg)数据显示，此举将使阿罗拉成为仅次于孙正义的软银第二大股东，孙正义持有软银19%的股份。

自去年7月被软银挖来以来，阿罗拉在科技初创企业进行了频繁投资，其中包括向印度在线市场Snapdeal投资6.27亿美元、以及向韩国在线零售商Coupang投资10亿美元。

在软银挣扎于扭转Sprint亏损局面的情况下，孙正义日益依赖阿罗拉来推动公司的海外业务增长。2013年，软银以220亿美元收购了Sprint这家美国移动网络运营商。

此次购股将在未来6个月内进行，以昨日软银7477日元的收盘价计算，这将使阿罗拉的持股达到0.7%左右。

译者/何黎