BEIJING: Masayoshi Son's nose for an investment has turned a US$20mil (RM63.04mil) startup punt on Alibaba into a stake worth maybe US$50bil (RM157.61bil) or more as the Chinese e-commerce giant co-founded and led by Jack Ma heads to what could be the biggest US tech IPO of all time.
Son, CEO of Japanese telecoms firm SoftBank Corp, also put money into a young Yahoo! Inc, co-founded by Jerry Yang, in 1995, and Yahoo!'s subsequent investment in Alibaba saw Ma, Son and Yang build Alibaba Group Holding Ltd into one of world's biggest Internet companies as China's e-commerce market took off.