Nikesh Arora, often regarded as the heir apparent of the Japan-based telecommunications-to-investment firm Softbank, has decided to step down from the company.
For this, Arora has already sold his $500-million plus shares back to Founder and current Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son.
The reason? Son, who had personally handpicked Arora as his successor, has now decided to continue at the helm for the next five to ten years, even after his 60th bithday -- the earlier date for retirement. Arora took to Twitter and the company held a conference call, both relaying that Arora didn't want to be a "CEO-in-waiting" and decided to take the step as the timelines of the two leaders did not meet.
Here's all you need to know about Nikesh Arora:
1) Of Indian-origin, Arora was born in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh and graduated from IIT Bhubaneswar in 1989. He moved to the US, to pursue a MBA degree from Northeastern University. In the US, he then did another course at Boston University, attending classes at night.
2) Arora did a brief stint at Wipro, and has worked with several companies, including Deutsche Telekom, Fidelity Investments, and Hellas Telecommunications. He was the chief marketing officer and on the management board at T-Mobile, Bharti Airtel Europe.
3) He worked with Google for ten years, resigning in July 2014 as the senior vice president and chief business officer.
4) He joined Softbank in 2014, and was handpicked by Masayoshi Son to be his successor after he proved his worth in the company.
This is despite the fact that Son had set up an internal "executive school" five years before that, to train candidates -- Son was expected to pick his successor from amongst them, a 2015 report from The Economist, said. But once Son and Arora grew closer, and Arora's investments started bearing fruits, Son dismissed the initial idea and Arora emerged as the natural choice to lead the way once Son was ready to hang his boots.
5) Arora has spearheaded several investments into the e-commerce sector in India. Under his leadership, in two years, Softbank put its money into a handful of start-ups including Snapdeal, Oyo Rooms, Housing.com, Ola, ScoopWhoop and even solar projects.
6) In fact, under Arora, Softbank has invested $2 billion into Indian start-ups and had pledged to invest $10 billion in ten years.
7) He was one of the top-paid executives in the world with a pay package of $73 million. In his first year of joining, his salary package along with a joining bonus set a record in Japan for being the highest compensation ever paid to an executive.
8) Arora's intentions at Softbank were recently questioned by a law firm, which claimed it was protecting the interests of "some Softbank investors". They sought an investigation into the matter from Softbank and even sought his resignation. Only a day before the news broke about him stepping down, Softbank, after conducting a thorough internal investigation, had given him a "clean chit". Son said, "I've always trusted Arora".
9) "We are still very much in love," Nikesh tweeted, when he was asked if the marriage between him and Son was over. The two had grown very fond of eachother from when they met when Softbank was making a deal with Yahoo in 2014, through his tenure at Softbank.
While Arora hasn't said what his next plans are going to be, he said he will stay on as an advisor to Softbank, and will be "chilling for sometime".
