SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son Sees Shareholder Support Plunge For His Reappointment After Proxy Advisor's Recommendation: Report

SoftBank Group Corp (OTC:SFTBY) (OTC:SFTBF) CEO Masayoshi Son has reportedly seen a significant drop in shareholder support for his reappointment, falling from 95.93% to 79.22% in a year. This follows a recommendation by proxy advisor Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) against his reappointment.

What Happened: The decline in support for Son’s reappointment was driven by the ISS’ recommendation, which cited SoftBank’s average return on equity of less than 5% over the past five years, Reuters reported. This was revealed in a stock market filing on Tuesday.

Notably, the reappointment of external director Kenneth Siegel also faced a decrease in shareholder support, dropping to 68.46% from 66.9% last year.

SoftBank has yet to respond to queries sent by Benzinga.

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Why It Matters: The drop in support for Son’s reappointment comes at a time when activist investor Elliott Investment Management has taken a bold stance against SoftBank. Elliott has demanded a $15 billion share buyback, questioning whether Son has learned from past mistakes at the Vision Fund.

Despite this, SoftBank’s stock has surged nearly 50% this year, driven by the impressive rally of Arm Holdings Plc, the chip designer it controls, whose shares have more than tripled since going public last year.

Son, however, remains undeterred and is preparing for a significant AI investment, emphasizing that SoftBank has no choice but to take the risk. Son had recently expressed regret over the decision to sell the company's stake in NVIDIA Corp and missing out on a potential $157 billion windfall.

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Photo by Nobuyuki Hayashi on Shutterstock

This story was generated using Benzinga Neuro and edited by Pooja Rajkumari