Masayoshi Son, founder and president of Japanese Internet investor Softbank Corp., has been named Businessman of the Year by U.S. business magazine Forbes Global for his visionary work that may transform Japan's economy.
In choosing Son as winner of the title created last year to recognize the most challenging and unique entrepreneur, Forbes Global hailed Son for building Softbank into a holding company of Internet company stakes worth more than $18 billion after starting with nothing 20 years ago.
It also cited the initiative Son took to innovate Japan's capital markets with the purchase of the nationalized Nippon Credit Bank by a Softbank-led group and creation of Nasdaq Japan in June.
"Son is working feverishly to open Japan's ossified capital markets to a new generation of entrepreneurs who could, with access to funding, transform the Japanese economy," Forbes Global said in its Dec. 25 issue.
"Should he fail, and with entrepreneurs like Son that is always a risk, the genie he has unleashed will not go quietly back into the bottle. This is not an unimportant undertaking in the world's second-largest -- but lifeless -- economy," it said, noting the worst excesses of the Net bubble can be seen in Son, citing a 90 percent tumble in the value of Softbank since February and a sharp fall in its profitability.