Masayoshi Son – Japanese Businessman

Masayoshi Son is a self-made billionaire in the telecom industry. In December of 2016, He went to Trump Tower to promise that his mobile telecom firm Softbank would invest money in the United States and create many jobs. The money being invested is part of a fund that is backed by Saudi Arabia.

Son has been working very hard to build up his firm Softbank. The largest acquisition to date is the purchase of the design firm ARM Holdings from the United Kingdom for around $32 billion. To find the cash to buy the company, Son sold stakes in the Chinese e-commerce platform Alibaba and in the Finnish game firm Supercell.

The Japanese company also acquired the United States based mobile phone carrier Sprint Nextel in 2013. Ever since then, Son has been working to turn the struggling company around but has had little success. However, in 2016, Forbes magazine named Masayoshi Son one of the 100 most powerful people in the world, ranking him #53.

The masculine name Masayoshi means “flourishing goodness” in Japanese. There are many notable people with the name, from Masayoshi Ebina a jockey to Masayoshi Kan a sprinter, even Masayoshi Yoshino a politician.

While the name Son means “mountain” in Vietnamese. The name is also used as a Danish name and is the modern version of Suni, which is from the Old Norse word sunr that means “son”. Similarly, it is also used to refer to a “male child” in the English language.