TOKYO — Just four months ago, Masayoshi Son, the daring billionaire who leads the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, looked as if he might lose it all. His company had just announced one of the largest annual losses of any firm in the history of corporate Japan. And tens of billions of dollars in investments he had made in high-tech industries like ride-sharing and hospitality looked set for even more devastating losses as the coronavirus pandemic limited the movement of much of humanity. But on Tuesday, SoftBank declared a seemingly miraculous turnabout: It announced that it had already swung back into the black, posting a $12 billion net profit for the three-month period that ended in June. Some of those companies are trading at higher levels than they were before the pandemic.

Source: New York Times August 11, 2020 07:39 UTC