Alok Sama, the go-to man for Masayoshi Son when it comes to some of his biggest financial deals, is reportedly leaving the company. Drawing curtains to a 5 year stint, Sama was instrumental in some of the biggest M&As that Softbank achieved in the last half a decade or so. The mega $32 Billion buy-out of ARM and the $59 Billion merger of Sprint and T-mobile were all transactions, done under Sama’s leadership.
Sama was also deeply involved in Softbank’s early India investments in Ola and Snapdeal. Alok Sama, a former Morgan Stanley banker, joined SoftBank in 2014 as adviser. He became the CFO of the group’s international holdings a year later.
While there is no official word out yet, a source close to the developments told the Economic Times, “He is likely to take some time off but is looking at different opportunities in investment management and advisory besides areas like distressed assets in India”.
Despite of the exit though, Sama will continue to represent SoftBank on the boards of SB Energy, the renewable energy joint venture with Bharti and Foxconn in India besides SoFi, a San Francisco-based online lender. There is no word on what role will he play in Softbank’s other startup investments globally.
Alok Sama was also closely associated with Nikesh Arora, who left Softbank rather abruptly in 2016. Nikesh was considered the ‘hier apparent’ by most in the industry. That however ended in 2016 when Softbank announced investigations in certain deals done under Arora. Alok Sama was also named in those investigations. Softbank later gave a clean chit to Arora, though he still decided to step down from his position as President of the Softbank group.
