MASAYOSHI SON

By FRANK GIBNEY JR.

He is often referred to as Japan's Bill Gates. But his $4.5 billion buying spree over the past 18 months has made Masayoshi Son something closer to the Napoleon of the multimedia business. First he swallowed Ziff-Davis, the American computer-magazine giant. Then he bought 37% of Yahoo, the U.S. Internet search-engine company. In June he and another corporate conqueror, News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch, acquired a 21% interest in TV Asahi, which will be the entrepreneurial duo's base for a 150-station satellite network called Japan Sky Broadcast. And in September, Son's Tokyo-based Softbank paid $1.5 billion for 80% of California-based Kingston Technology, the world's largest maker of computer-memory products. Son's ultimate goal: nothing less than Softbank's dominance of the Internet world.

Son grew up a second-generation Korean Japanese in a country that has traditionally had little tolerance for immigrants, least of all Koreans. When Son started Softbank in 1981, his ambitions so unnerved his first two employees that they quit within two weeks. The 39-year-old Japanese entrepreneur, who made his first $1 million at age 20 by selling an electronic-pocket-translator patent to Sharp, never blinked. Barely graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, he begged and borrowed enough to build a company that by 1995 controlled half the Japanese market for personal-computer software.

Softbank now has a stake in more than 50 Internet-related companies around the world, in addition to major interests in computer publishing, electronic banking, software development and broadcasting. But both analysts and competitors note that the company's $2.4 billion debt leaves Softbank with little room for error. Son counters such skepticism by detailing Softbank's long-term strategy and the company's accounting procedures, which involve intricate performance reviews of top managers each month.

Son's brash approach to dealmaking defies Japan's hidebound business tradition. "When we started Softbank," says Son, "we didn't have money, we didn't have experience, people, talent or infrastructure. That was the first stage, and now we are on to the second and third stages." He likes to tell the tale of his joint venture with Murdoch: it was last April, and Murdoch's office called to ask if the Softbank chairman would speak at a News Corp. reception in Tokyo. Son's assistant, protective of his schedule and not recognizing the Murdoch name, dutifully turned down the request. "'Wow, no!' I told her," Son recalls. "'This is one invitation we have to accept.'" Four weeks and just two meetings later, Son had convinced Murdoch that Softbank was the partner he needed in the $164 million deal to launch Japan Sky Broadcast.

--By Frank Gibney Jr.