Shortly after the meltdown of FTX came to light last week, the name SoftBank cropped up among the early backers of the stricken cryptocurrency exchange. Inevitably, perhaps.
The Japanese tech conglomerate, say people close to it, will take a full writedown on its FTX investment of about $100mn: horrible but, when placed against the more show-stopping $10bn investment loss SoftBank revealed at its second-quarter results on Friday, almost comfortingly modest.
In the mishap-strewn trail from WeWork to this latest debacle, the sense of omni-blunder by the world’s most prominent (and self-declared) “vision capitalist” is now properly bedding in. SoftBank may claim to be in full defensive mode and its founder less involved in the running of the investments. But where there is an opportunity to lose money on tech these days, Masayoshi Son still seems one step ahead of the market at having found it ages ago. He may also, in the company of visionaries such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, be among the clearest modern-day re-definers of John Kenneth Galbraith’s “bezzle”.