SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son is building a portfolio of investees that lean on each other

Masayoshi Son’s keen sense of opportunism has allowed him to pull off some of his biggest deals to date. That isn’t an insult.

Brexit and the subsequent drop in the British pound allowed SoftBank Group Corp to snap up semiconductor company ARM Holdings Plc in 2016 for a relative bargain compared to the headline price. Internal troubles at Uber Technologies Inc paved the way for Masa to grab a 16.3 per cent stake in the world’s hottest start-up last year, making SoftBank’s Vision Fund its largest shareholder.

So it made sense that when German payments provider Wirecard AG got caught up in allegations of accounting wrongdoing, which it has refuted, Masa would be standing by.