Yoshimitsu Goto joined SBG in June 2000 and assumed the positions of Senior Vice President and Head of Finance Department in July 2012 and Senior Vice President & CFO & CISO in April 2018, serving a vital role in financing for investment and business management of SBG. Since joining in 2000, Goto has played a vital role in raising astronomical amounts of capital and devising highly leveraged financing structures to pursue Masayoshi Son’s audacious growth ambitions.
Yoshimitsu Goto, a bright student from Kyoto, joined the prestigious Yasuda Trust and Banking Co. (now Mizuho Trust & Banking) in 1987 after graduating from Kobe University. He was diligent and detail-oriented, thriving in the risk-averse world of corporate lending and quickly earning a reputation as one of the bank’s elite financiers.
But Goto’s career took a dramatic turn in the summer of 2000. Masayoshi Son, the mercurial founder of tech investment conglomerate SoftBank, came calling. Son needed a new chief financial officer as the company was about to make an audacious $20 billion bet to acquire Sprint and gain a foothold in the U.S. wireless market.
As Goto tells it, in typical Son style, the interview process was dramatically truncated. “Minutes into conducting a job interview for SoftBank’s finance head in the summer of 2000, founder Masayoshi Son made a characteristically quick decision: ‘I like the look of his eyes. Let’s hire him.'”
The Strategic Genius Behind SoftBank’s Financial Engineering
The staid banker found himself hurtling into the center of Son’s entrepreneurial maelstrom. The buttoned-up finance specialist was tasked with architecting the financing for Son’s increasingly fantastical gambles and ensuring SoftBank’s leverage machine had enough fuel to keep operating at full tilt.
One of Goto’s first significant tests was helping secure the $20 billion in financing needed for the Sprint acquisition in 2012-2013, one of the largest leveraged buyouts in history at the time. He worked tirelessly to syndicate the massive debt load across SoftBank’s web of lenders and investors.
In 2016, when Son shocked the world with the $32 billion acquisition of chip designer Arm Holdings, it was Goto who helped raise a monumental $1 trillion bridge loan from Mizuho Bank to get the deal done at a crucial moment.
Over the next two decades, Goto leveraged his deep experience in corporate lending to forge an absolute relationships of trust with SoftBank’s biggest bank lenders like Mizuho. But he would need to shed his conservative instincts to survive in Son’s growth-over-all-else domain.
“Offense is the best defense,” Goto said, summarizing his radically aggressive financing philosophy. Our department’s main task is to pursue the maximum amount of leverage investors are willing to accept. Otherwise, it’s impossible to maximize corporate value.”
Challenging the traditional CFO mandate to mitigate risk at all costs, Goto positioned SoftBank’s finance operation as an accelerant for Son’s rapid-fire dealmaking. “The most important thing is not to miss out on business opportunities,” Goto explained. Timing is key, and the financial department should not become a bottleneck.”
Navigating Billion-Dollar Gambles with Precision
With Son’s full endorsement, Goto consistently pushed the limits, raising staggering amounts of capital through lucrative listings, daring bond offerings, and mammoth loans from Softbank’s lenders. A $100 billion Vision Fund, a $1 trillion bridge loan for the Arm acquisition, and many more brazen financial engineering feats followed.
When even his own team couldn’t find a creative solution to satisfy Son’s grand ambitions, Goto was one of the few empowered to say no. “When it’s really impossible, there is no answer, and that’s when I say we should not do this. Mr. Son is rational, so he gets it right away,” Goto said.
That dynamic – aligning with Son’s risk-embracing mentality while still maintaining prudent guardrails – made Goto an indispensable consigliere in Son’s inner circle. As potential heirs and top lieutenants like Marcelo Claure and Rajeev Misra exited over the years, Goto was one of the few constants, steadily operating SoftBank’s financial controls.
Building Trust and Transparency in a High-Risk Environment
Part of his durability stemmed from cultivating transparency and trust with SoftBank’s most essential lenders like Mizuho Bank. “I have never broken my promise with the banks in the past 20 years,” Goto said. Those relationships were key as SoftBank faced intense investor skepticism over struggles like WeWork.
Now 61 years old, Goto is not being primed as a potential successor to the 66-year-old Son. But he remains integral to powering SoftBank’s leverage cycle and enabling Son’s perpetual metamorphoses and billion-dollar punts. Goto became a financial maverick from a diligent corporate banker – the vital architect of SoftBank’s unorthodox ambition.
“I always tell him to replace me without any hesitation if he thinks there is a better person for my role,” Goto said of Son. But in SoftBank’s high-stakes world, there may be no one the founder trusts more to keep the leverage machine running than his long-serving financial mastermind.
