Founder of Fast Retailing resigns from SoftBank

Japan’s SoftBank Group Corporation said Tadashi Yanai, founder and CEO of Uniqlo parent Fast Retailing, will resign as independent board member at the end of the month after 18 years on the job to focus on his fashion business.

A longtime ally and sometime critic of SoftBank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son, the billionaire is one of only three external members of a board filled with SoftBank executives and heads of its portfolio companies.

The resignation comes at a time when SoftBank is battling with the fallout from the failed IPO of WeWork, with Son saying he misjudged co-founder Adam Neumann’s character and pledging to strengthen corporate governance at the group’s investments.

However, experts are critical of SoftBank’s governance, saying it has few truly independent voices that can question Son’s judgement.

“They have low governance standards,” said Nicholas Benes of The Board Director Training Institute of Japan, a non-profit focused on corporate governance training.

“If they don’t require higher standards of themselves, it might be hard to require them of investee companies,” he said in an interview last month.

Son in November defended the board’s rigour after reporting the group’s first quarterly loss in 14 years, saying that Yanai was among the board members who excoriated him for the WeWork investment. “Almost all the board members gave me a hard time. I ended up being very exhausted,” he said.

Reuters