After a bruising year, SoftBank braces for more pain

, at the height of the pandemic boom in all things digital, Son Masayoshi embodied the futuristic promise of global techdom. The flamboyant founder of SoftBank Group, a telecoms-and-software firm turned investment powerhouse, reported the highest ever annual profit for a Japanese company, driven by soaring valuations of the public and private technology darlings in its vast portfolio. Twelve months later SoftBank and Masa, as Mr Son is known for short, are once again the face of tech. Now both he and the industry are dealing with rising interest rates, deteriorating balance-sheets, investor disillusionment and, for good measure, China’s crackdown on its digital champions and reinvigorated trustbusters in the West. What happens next to the Masa-verse is thus of interest not just to SoftBank’s ailing shareholders, who have collectively lost $140bn or so in stockmarket value since its share price peaked in February 2021, but also to anyone interested in the fate of tech more broadly.