| [ history ] in KIDS 글 쓴 이(By): artistry (호연지기) 날 짜 (Date): 1999년 7월 27일 화요일 오전 09시 34분 05초 제 목(Title): 뉴욕/ 손정의 관련기사 July 26, 1999 An Entrepreneurial Exception Harnesses the Internet in Japan By SHERYL WuDUNN OKYO -- Masayoshi Son seems an unlikely deal maker in the bubbly and free-spirited world of the Internet. Short, boyish-looking and soft-spoken, Son -- while in Japan -- wears the Japanese business uniform of a white shirt and an immaculately pressed black suit. In public, he sometimes stands stiffly and smiles only slightly. He bows often to emphasize his humility. Stuart Isett/Sygma for The New York Times Masayoshi Son, without the usual black suit, in his office in Tokyo. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Moreover, he lives in Tokyo, the risk-averse capital of the world, where the Internet is still a foreign concept to many. But if there is such a thing as an Internet financial and media empire, Son's company, Softbank, may be it. Son, 41, and Softbank are already among the most powerful financial forces in cyberspace, controlling key stakes in 100 Internet information providers in the United States and 20 such companies in Japan. The stakes in publicly held companies, worth $15 billion to $20 billion, are sprinkled widely. Softbank now owns 28 percent of Yahoo. And it has important stakes in Geocities, E-Loans, E-Trade, USWeb Message Media, and TheStreet.com. And Softbank is intensifying its focus on the Internet with new deals all the time. Last Tuesday, for example, it agreed to pay $20 million for a 40 percent stake in Webhire, an online recruiting company. And Softbank may sell much of its 70 percent stake in Ziff-Davis, the publisher of such magazines as PC Week. "If you want a global player in the Internet, they are the player," said Jarett F. Wait, chief operating officer in Asia for Lehman Brothers, which recently released a 195-page report on the company. "There's nobody else that comes close." But while Son is Japan's leading entrepreneur, the oddity, and perhaps the reason, is that he is not ethnically Japanese. A Chinese-Korean, he grew up poor in southern Japan, closed off from normal avenues in Japan's corporate world because of discrimination against Koreans. Denied a chance to succeed at a leading company, he started Softbank and has become one of Japan's richest men. Softbank's aim is to become a global Internet "zaibatsu," a Japanese-style empire with investments in many linked companies. Softbank has begun Internet ventures through Yahoo in Germany, France and Britain; it has investment alliances with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. in Europe, and a joint venture in South Korea. "For the next 10 years, we do nothing but Internet," Son said, speaking in English during an interview in his spacious office. "Because that's where the whole society is going to have a big revolution." Now, after building the foundations of his Internet kingdom in the United States, Son is turning back to Japan -- one of the least entrepreneurial societies. Last month, he and Frank G. Zarb, chairman of the National Association of Securities Dealers, announced a plan to form a new trading exchange, a Japanese version of Nasdaq, that could become a center for electronic brokerage activity, electronic research and entrepreneurial ventures in Japan. Son will feed that entrepreneurial spirit with venture-capital funds that aim to pour $85 million into building Japanese start-ups and grooming hundreds of Softbank wannabes. On June 29, Son held a reception for 1,400 budding entrepreneurs. He spent the morning of July 5 with Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi and other government officials to offer some ideas for reviving Japan's economy. The entry of Son, an entrepreneur from the Korean minority, into the prime minister's residence underscores the changing times in Japan. Yet he faces some enormous challenges. So far he has been a kind of venture capitalist, backing Internet enterprises early and riding on their success. But he does not manage or plan them. And the soaring value of Internet stocks has perhaps exaggerated his ability to pick individual winners. Son's appetite for expansion has often outstripped his financial ability. Even now, he often taps the bond markets, and he is carrying about three times as much debt as equity. If there is a shake-out in the Internet, or if Internet stocks prove to be a bubble that pops, then Softbank may falter. Moreover, as Son ventures into relatively new territory -- like the stock exchange -- he is taking risks in areas in which he has no proved expertise. Still, no one seems eager to bet against him. And almost no one is better than he is at adjusting to a new situation. He sometimes comes across as a chameleon. He can backslap and talk in colloquial English with American investment bankers and then discuss the details of new computer chips with the techies. He can also turn somber and bow and speak in polite Japanese to melt into a Japanese business crowd. This knack comes from his personal background, which has haunted and helped him since his days growing up in a small town on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu. Son's grandparents came to Japan from Korea, where his family had lived for 21 generations after migrating from China. His father and other Koreans illegally built their houses on land owned by Japan National Railways, which led to a long-running conflict with the authorities. It was on that land that Son's father raised pigs and chickens and illicitly made sake. The home brew was apparently lucrative, for he became the first person in town to buy a car. When Son's family moved out of its Korean neighborhood so he could attend a better school, to try to melt into society the family took a Japanese last name, Yasumoto. "I was a good student, but in those days I had a darkness in my mind all the time," Son wrote in an essay in 1992. "It was because of my nationality. When I was with friends, I was very happy. When I came back home alone, I had the feeling that I was hiding something from my friends." He took on his real Korean-Chinese name, Son, when he went to the United States at 16 to attend high school and then on to the University of California at Berkeley. It was his American experience, he says, that laid the groundwork for his career. "If I had stayed all the time in Japan," Son said, "I probably would have become much more conservative, just as other Japanese." One important element in the effort to change attitudes of young people will be to expand opportunities for them to finance their companies and to reward them with stock options -- and that is where the new stock exchange comes in. In February, Son met John L. Hilley, an aide to Zarb for the first time through a mutual friend. Over dinner at a French restaurant at the Royal Park Hotel, close to Softbank's offices, Hilley began pouring out his frustrations over trying to break into the Japanese market. He had been in meetings his whole trip and had received very little encouragement. "I said, 'Maybe we can help, maybe you went to the wrong place,"' Son recalled. He told Hilley, "You need someone who has the entrepreneurial spirit to make this happen." Son and Zarb then began talking about setting up a new exchange, an idea made possible by recent changes in the securities regulations under Japan's financial liberalization. The idea also dovetailed with Son's ambition to help shape electronic brokerage and the Internet in Japan. Even if this proposal fails and Son suffers a blow to his reputation, he still has his bet on the Internet. He says that as Internet technology evolves, the potential for returns from the information that travels on the network will be far greater than anything realized so far. "That's my fortune-telling, " he said. "I'm betting on that." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Related Sites These sites are not part of The New York Times on the Web, and The Times has no control over their content or availability. 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