SoftBank doubles buyback plans while Jack Ma leaves board

Record loss: People walking by a SoftBank shop in Tokyo. The Japanese technology and telecoms company is finding itself in a deepening crisis. — AP

TOKYO: SoftBank Group Corp has doubled the amount it plans to spend buying back shares and announced changes to its board, including the resignation of long-time director Jack Ma.

The company plans to repurchase as much as 500 billion yen (US$4.7bil) worth of its own stock by March 2021, it said in a statement. That’s on top of an equally sized repurchase it had announced in mid-March.