Japan's Billionaire Brawl: SoftBank's Son vs. Rakuten's Mikitani

A price war at home could wind up weakening two tech titans

From left, Masayoshi Son and Hiroshi MikitaniPhotographs by Noriyuki Aida/Bloomberg; Denis Allard/REA/Redux

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By Bruce Einhorn and Yuki Yamaguchi and Yusuke Miyazawa

October 17, 2013 at 8:26 PM UTC

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Japan's Billionaire Brawl: SoftBank's Son vs. Rakuten's Mikitani

The Japanese are witnessing a rare spectacle: two of the country’s business titans, both with global ambitions, openly jabbing at each other. In one corner is Masayoshi Son, Japan’s second-richest man and president of SoftBank. Besides being the No. 3 mobile carrier in Japan, SoftBank is also the leading shareholder in Chinese e-commerce powerhouse Alibaba Group and owns stakes in more than 1,000 Web businesses around the world, including BuzzFeed and Zynga in the U.S. This summer SoftBank took control of mobile carrier Sprint in a $21.6 billion deal. In the latest sign of Son’s determination to expand his reach beyond Japan, SoftBank announced on Oct. 15 it was paying $1.53 billion for 51 percent of Supercell, the Finnish developer of the popular Clash of Clans mobile game. Son is also in talks to buy a stake in Brightstar, a distributor of handsets based in Miami.