Masayoshi Son (Japanese: 孫 正義 Hepburn: Son Masayoshi?, Korean: 손정의 Son Jeong-ui; born August 11, 1957) is a Korean-descendant (Zainichi Korean) Japanese businessman and the founder and current chief executive officer of SoftBank, the chief executive officer of SoftBank Mobile, and current chairman of Sprint Corporation. According to Forbes magazine, Son’s estimated net worth is US $20.4 billion and he is the richest man in Japan, despite having the distinction of losing the most money in history (approximately $70bn during the dot com crash of 2000). Forbes also describes him as a philanthropist.
Son was named the world’s 45th most powerful person by Forbes Magazine’s List of The World’s Most Powerful People in 2013.
Background
His ancestors moved from Korea to Japan.
Son’s family adopted the Japanese surname Yasumoto (安本?) in daily life and Son used this surname as a child. Son pursued his interests in business by securing a meeting with Japan McDonald’s president Den Fujita. Taking his advice, Son began studying English and computer science.
At age 16, Son moved to California and finished high school while staying with friends and family in South San Francisco. After spending two years at Holy Names University, he transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, at which he majored in economics and studied computer science. Enamored of a microchip featured in a magazine, Son at age 19 became confident that computer technology would ignite the next commercial revolution.
Convinced that anything related to microchips could yield a fortune, Son decided to produce at least one entrepreneurial idea a day. He patented a translating device that he eventually sold to Sharp Electronics for $450,000. Applications of the patent include the Wizard series of Sharp PDAs.
Son graduated from Berkeley with a BA in economics in 1980, and started Unison in Oakland, California, which has since been bought by Kyocera. Son decided to use his Korean-style surname when he came back to Japan to become a role model for ethnic Korean children there. In 1990, Son adopted Japanese citizenship.
Source:wikipedia