Gambling Man: The Wild Ride of Japan’s Masayoshi Son

The real story behind the mercurial Masayoshi Son, who has three times lost and made tens of billions of dollars Gambling Man is the biography of one of the world's least known but most consequential investors. Japan's Masayoshi Son has made and lost several fortunes, investing or controlling assets worth $1 trillion in the past two decades through his media-tech giant, SoftBank. He bankrolled Alibaba, China's internet colossus, before the world had heard about it; plotted with Steve Jobs to turn the iPhone into a wonder product; and financed hundreds of tech start-ups, fuelling the biggest boom Silicon Valley has ever seen. This book takes you on Son's wild ride, from his birthplace in a Korean slum in post-war Japan to the modern-day temples of power. It speeds through Donald Trump's golden skyscraper in Manhattan, the royal palaces of Riyadh and the throne rooms of China's Marxist rulers; all places where Son has deployed his unique blend of financial engineering and crazy risk-taking. Son's story captures a 25 year-span of hyper-globalisation in which money, technologies and ideas flowed freely. From the launch of the microchip to the advent of artificial intelligence, he has ridden the technological wave which has created extraordinary wealth and economic change. His topsy-turvy business career is testimony to the power of optimism, daring to dream, ever in search of the Next Big Thing. As an ethnic Korean in Japan, Son has overcome adversity and discrimination to become Japan's best-known businessman and empire-builder but he remains an elusive, intensely private figure. This book, by a former editor of the Financial Times, contains a wealth of new information and has had the co-operation of many of the key participants, including Son himself. Written with a verve appropriate to its subject, Gambling Man reveals the man behind the money, what drives him, why he matters, and what he plans for his next act.

About the Author :
Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times from 2005 to 2020, is an author, broadcaster and lecturer. During four decades as an award-winning journalist, he has interviewed many world leaders and leading CEOs. He is a regular visitor to Japan.

Review :
A rare insight into the life of Masayoshi Son, the mysterious Korean-Japanese tech investor who has made — and lost — more money than anyone else this century... Barber sets out Son’s extraordinary backstory, details all the deals, big and small, that Son did to enrich himself and [gives] a privileged boardroom-table view of the gilded age of tech-utopianism and borderless finance [with an] eye for colour [that] is more than enough to keep the everyday reader engaged Like Ron Chernow on John D. Rockefeller, or Walter Isaacson on Steve Jobs, Lionel Barber has given us the defining account of an era in business history. Gambling Man confirms Barber's gift for brilliantly decoding the nuances of power. He dissects the layers of Masayoshi Son’s empire to reveal the anatomy of modern risk Gambling Man is a brilliant achievement of investigative reporting and narrative writing. The story of Mayoshi Son and Softbank's ambition and error across decades is fascinating in its own right and essential to an understanding of global tech and finance since the 1990s. With literary flair and stunning revelations, Lionel Barber delivers one of the very best biographies of a business titan to appear in years Gambling Man is a pacy and highly professional telling of Son’s remarkable story, which skilfully draws out its broader historical themes A sure-footed account ... Barber has a journalist's eye for his subject's telling idiosyncracies ... [his] detailed biography documents a career punctuaed with attention-grabbing successes and abrupt reversals Lionel Barber has written a fascinating book about Masa Son, one of the world’s most prolific investors and business builders. Masa’s story has the makings of an Ian Fleming novel. It’s hard to imagine someone like Masa has done more things than almost anyone you could imagine. Lionel cracked the code in helping us all understand this remarkable individual Son deserves far wider recognition than has come his way, and Gambling Man is a parable that should be read by every would-be business empire builder A fascinating and richly reported insight into entrepreneurial excess and excitement, from Tokyo to Silicon Valley How did Son rise to the heights of global wealth and power? And how did he acquire the self-confidence to bounce back from repeated meltdowns? Lionel Barber answers these questions in Gambling Man: The Wild Ride of Japan’s Masayoshi Son. It is not only a first-rate biography of an elusive billionaire; it is also, and just as intriguingly, an analysis of the recent age of tech-driven globalization from the unusual perspective of Japan Highly entertaining ... in writing Gambling Man, Barber has produced a definitive biography of this fascinating figure who seems to be everywhere yet is somehow strangely elusive. The author seems to have interviewed every important person in Son's life, from his father to the American professor who went "red with anger" when he recalled his dealings with a young Son in 1978. Barber's book also tells us a lot about the world we live in, how the intersection of technology and finance has created enormous fortunes and changed lifestyles everywhere