Billionaire Secrets Exposed and my chilling encounter with Vladimir Putin

0:00Hi, I'm Lionel Barber, former editor of the Financial Times, and author of Gambling Man, a new book out now. You're obviously a former editor of the Financial Times. You left five years ago. So how do you think journalism's changed since you left the FT? In general, it's just got tougher. A lot more social media, everything, you know, instant coverage, everything in the moment. We've got to be careful that people need to use two sources, not one source, not a rush to judgment. And apart from that, the world's in total disarray. Yeah, it's good content, though. Never short of content anymore. No, you're certainly not.

0:40I mean, the presidential election in America is, you know, maybe the most consequential since 1968. It's had everything. You got a war in Ukraine and then the Middle East. So huge news. And, of course, technology, AI, people making fortunes, stock market booming, kind of total disconnect between happy markets and unhappy geopolitics. And happy people. Yeah. What is your take on the American election right now? Ooh, are you going to put me on the spot? It's an interesting time to ask you. But I also imagine that it's not the first time you've thought about it. Well, I've done a couple of dinners in the city of London with some finances, got interviewing people in America on Zoom, and I got put on the spot.

1:26And I decided, because it's a special program, I'm going to say it's still, it's Trump's to lose. Because she hasn't made the case on the economy. And in a really uncertain world, it's a big ass to have a first woman in the White House. I don't think the African-American thing is massive. But it's a big, it's a big ass. And Trump, for all the weirdness, I think he's still, and it's all going to come down to 100 ,000 votes, probably in a few states in the Midwest. But here's the caveat. People just may have said, think, you know, it's time for a change. I don't want more Trump. I don't want more chaos.

2:07So the cycle has moved. But it's really close. I heard a brilliant quote on Joe Rogan, actually, Shemath Palihapitiya. I think I pronounced it correctly. Yes, I'm familiar with the tech investor in the West Coast. Yeah, so he said... Talks a good game. Yeah, he does talk a good game. This isn't about that, don't worry. I feel like I want to unpack that. Yeah, yeah. No, he said the thing with Trump is right message, wrong messenger. And I thought that was actually really interesting. That's about one of the smartest things he said. Totally. It was really... Definitely on the money. I mean, if you go to America, which I do regularly, you know, six, eight trips a year, everybody says, do we have to have this choice between...

2:48Yeah, yeah, yeah. But of course, Biden was even worse. I mean, he was not functioning. I couldn't believe that the media missed that story. And he would have lost, dead certain. I mean, the debate was a disaster, but actually the debate was cognitive functions and everything else so Kamala Harris it's by the way normally American presidential campaigns are like marathons or decathlins just on and on and all the obstacles this is like a 200 meter sprint it's a sprint isn't it yeah how does Masa-san his appetite for risk compared to other billionaires that you've come across it's off the charts.

3:28It's totally different. Masayoshi Son, founder and CEO of this media conglomerate soft bank based in Japan. It's global. And he founded it 40 plus years ago, 1981. It was originally a software distribution company. And I mean, think about it. How many times have you guys met somebody who's prepared to bet the company five, six times in life, who's made and lost several fortunes and he's now worth i don't know maybe 35 billion dollars not bad from somebody who will talk about where he came from him he grew up in a shanty town in western japan so very unconventional rags to riches story here's isn't it yeah very unconventional because masayoshi son and i think this is key to answering your question about risk taking and risk appetite if you're an outsider in Japan and Koreans are and you want to prove that you're better and you're going to make it and you're going to be number one your kind of risk appetite is much much higher because you're desperate to to show that you're a nobody you're born a nobody but you really want to be a somebody if you could give son one piece of advice what would it be oh do you think I'm entitled financial times for 14 plus years and i'm going to tell this multi-billionaire advice well i would say why is it given all the assets that you own he had that stake in alibaba which was his great bet where he put in 100 million it then turned into 100 billion on paper at least.

5:15One of the best investments ever. Best investments ever. Made it in 1999-2000 at the near the top of the tech bubble, the dot-com bubble. The advice I would give him is, look, you own all these assets, but if you look at the share price, your share price is below what all the assets are worth. So why don't you do a few things to get the share price a bit more up to reflect the value of the underlying assets? Because he's got a mobile phone business, He's got Yahoo Japan. He's got blah, blah, blah. He's got investments in 500 companies around the world. Can you believe that? That's amazing. Blah, blah, blah, not to be confused with Alibaba.

5:56That's Alibla, blah. Alibla, blah, yeah. What's the most valuable lesson that you've actually learned from interviewing any of these great people that you have in business and your role as a Financial Times editor? Resilience.

6:11Everybody's going to make mistakes. everybody's going to fail at some point but and risk taking involves failure so don't take it really personally just accept i mean jeff bezos the amazon founder talks about good failure and bad failure bad failures if you kind of you know you've done it the same thing before so why are you repeating it good failure is i'm trying to do something different so maybe i don't fail who is the most difficult person you've ever interviewed vladimir putin wow that's pretty cool that you interviewed him i did in 2019 in the kremlin well he kept me waiting for four hours i think that's fair enough it is he he is psychologically he's really intimidating And he only speaks in Russian, right?

7:03Yes, but I decided to try and, you know, get on the right side of the interview by being polite, but speaking to him in German, because he was a KGB agent in East Germany, and he spoke back in German. His German is flawless. That was a way of connecting. But if you interview him with those watery eyes that he has and he looks right through you, it's fairly intimidating. Blimey. What was the most exciting insight that you got out of him? Did you feel like you got anything out of him that you wanted to? Like your job is to get things out and his job is to withhold, right? You bet I got something because I did.

7:45Again, it's worth thinking about how do you do an interview with someone like that? Well, the answer is you do prep. You don't read lots and lots of books, but you talk to people who know Putin. So I rang up Bill Burns, who's now the director of the CIA. And he'd been ambassador in, you know, I like to drop names. This is a quality podcast. Yeah, yeah, quality people. Quality people. So I rang him up and he was, he had been ambassador in Moscow. He'd also been deputy secretary of state. So he'd met Putin for hours. And I just said, just tell me, you know, what shouldn't I do? And he said, don't talk down to him.

8:24Be very respectful at the beginning. And then I said, thank you, Bill. It's been absolutely great. I've known him for a number of years. And I said, tell me the question you would ask him. And he came up with this great question, which was, Mr. President, you've been in power for 20 years. Would you say that your risk appetite has gone up or down after 20 years? So this was translated, it was consecutive translation. and Putin looked at me and he kind of gave a, I'm not going to answer that, you know, it's difficult to say. And then I looked at him kind of and he said, we have a Russian saying, those who do not take the risk do not get to drink the champagne.

9:15That just captured Putin. Because if you think of what happened 18 months later with Ukraine, he's drinking champagne. He was up for the risk-taking. So it's that kind of, that was a bit of a moment. What did you think of Tucker Colson's interview with Putin? Terrible. Did you? Because he basically was just a sycophant. He was a total sycophant. Now, again, I don't want to be smart-ass because I've made lots of mistakes, but this interview that I did with Putin was probably one of the highlights of my career. And I did bring my colleague Henry Foy, who's now the Brussels Bureau Chief. He was the West Moscow correspondent, and he was useful.

9:52He was with me. I did the questioning but I said I looked at Tucker Carlson and he was sycophantic at the beginning and Putin when he asked his first question Putin said I thought this was going to be a serious interview and this is just like a talk show host absolutely see he masterminded him so hard he did but when I saw Putin I just said thank you very much in German and he looked at me and he said because i said i'd met him before and he said where did you learn your german and i said well actually at oxford university but i also was a student in germany but i studied german and modern history at oxford and putin looked at me and immediately said in German what is modern history at this point I'm like a prize fighter that's just been hit on the nose the chin I'm gasping for air what do I say and I I kind of got it together and I said Mr.

11:00President modern history is everything after 1989 he loved that and then he said okay now sit down so yeah that versus Tucker Carlson yeah it's a I mean look again I've made lots of mistakes but that was to just establish that i had a bit of a brain you know i mean carlson was useless terrible interview so who is master son he is a korean japanese who grew up in the western island of kyushu now if you're trying to imagine kyushu on a map it's a bit like cuba jutting towards Florida. That's Kyushu juts towards Korea. It's really close. And his grandparents came from Korea at the turn of the century.

11:52And at that time, Korea was part of the Japanese empire, Imperial Japan. And they went there for jobs. And his grandfather worked in a colliery. Well, fast forward, Japan is annihilated in World War II, the atom bombs fall, and the son family goes back to korea but they're seen as traitors in that why what you're from japan go you you should go back to japan so they do and at that point it's destitution i mean it's terrible and i describe this in the book just and and and they go back to a shanty town a slum next to the railway station and that's where masa is born now before you start feeling too sorry for him actually the deprivation only lasts for about four or five years because his father left school at 14 and by the way i've interviewed his father amazing interview in the family home when he was 87 and this guy was a bootlegger aged 14 then he went into pig breeding which was quite profitable after the uh second world war and then he goes into loan sharking so and then crucial point he goes into slot machine gambling called pachinko well and that's two things about that One is that's where the Koreans work a lot because it's undercover.

13:27It's sort of in the margins, gray zone. But it's a huge business, this gambling. It accounted for at one point about 3 % or 4 % of Japan's GDP. Can you imagine? So it's huge business. So this guy made a lot of money in pachinko. But pachinko is viewed as underworld. It's dodgy. and masa he says i don't want to follow my father i want to be somebody i want to be a teacher his father says you can't be because you're korean and you if you're korean you can't work as a teacher in japan by the way he's also got two names he's got a japanese alias because all these koreans are pretending to be japanese right but they're not full japanese citizens they haven't got japanese They've got two names.

14:17Anyway, he says, I'm leaving. He escapes. He goes on a journey, which, by the way, many entrepreneurs do. The great entrepreneurs, great people, they do something in their teens. They go somewhere. And he goes to America to complete his education and learn English. And that is the big move. Two questions on that. Firstly, what was his father's home like? when I went there, it was like a shrine to Masayoshi Son. Masayoshi Son and SoftBank own a baseball team. I'll come to that a bit later. It's called the SoftBank Hawks in Fukuoka. Baseball's huge in Japan as well, right? It's worth saying. Big.

15:05By the way, it's a championship winning team, of course, because Masa loves to be a winner. Yep. So I go in this house with my translator, and Masayoshi-son's father, who's 87 years old by this time, he's definitely a slightly dodgy character, and he's got his partner, it's not his wife, he calls his wife an old hag, that's Masa's mama, just I can't be dealing with her. I mean, and I'm mind-blown by this, right? But in the house, all the photographs are of Masa wearing a baseball cap and crucially some of masa's own paintings because he's a painter he's got a creative streak wow and one of the paintings and i deliberately i asked can i take a picture of this painting is a self-portrait when masa is about 14 years old and it's so sad he looks utterly he's got these sort of deep serious eyes fierce stare but he's depressed and this is a story and masa himself said at that age i felt suicidal because i wanted to be somebody but i was living undercover with a false name and i was so unhappy and i couldn't be a teacher and that portrait which I put in the book because I took a picture of it tells you again everything and by the way his father talking about master said I told him he was a genius when he was he was treated like a princeling even though he was the second son um I I looked at him and he then said I said well how do you know he was a genius how did you know he was special and he said let me tell you when he was about seven years old, he got into a sumo wrestling fight with his brother and he lost, but he wouldn't give up.

16:57And he just held onto his brother and I had to tear him away. And then I looked at his eyes and his eyes were at this wolf's eyes. And I thought, this bastard is not human. That's what his father said. Can you believe it? And I'm writing all this down and recording and thinking, this has got to be good. This is good material. Definitely. What is the most outrageous story of Sun that you didn't put into the book? Well, I didn't leave much on the cutting room floor. I'd have to think about that. That's something that I put pretty well everything in. I mean, you know. What about the fact that he stood you up twice?

17:39Ah. Outrageous to me. I put that in the Financial Times article and I need to check whether I put it in at the back end of the book. But yeah, I mean, but, you know, we need to get over the fact that, okay, so he's a multi-billionaire. He doesn't want this book being written about me. He's got some ex-editor turns up at his, you know, I said I was coming. This was straight after COVID. So maybe the first time I, he, there are rumors that he was not well. And he's, by the way, he almost died from hepatitis B when he was in his mid-twenties. So he's had health issues. And by the way, if you're talking about risk, you were talking about earlier, then if you recover from hepatitis B and you're only given two or three years, that makes you probably...

18:31A bit invincible. Yeah. So, yeah, maybe I could have said that I was stood up. Yeah. What do you think about the future of SoftBank when Masa's son presumably steps down? I think he's going to be carried out in the coffin. I mean, he is not going to step down, in my view. And SoftBank without Masa is not SoftBank. The SoftBank is two, broadly speaking, two entities. I mean, one is it's a sort of solid, I can understand this type of business, which is mobile phones. e-commerce, Yahoo Japan, SoftBank Mobile. But there's this other stuff, the SoftBank Group, which is this giant investing outfit, which is also leveraged.

19:19It's borrowing a lot of money against other assets. And it's got sort of what I describe as the Jackson Pollock theory of investing, the sort of spray all over the place and prey. And, you know, that is harder to understand. Now, I think after Masa, and it would become more the operating business with some investment it would shrink i think who would take over i'm pretty certain a japanese would take over i you know he he did flirt with a couple of other people and it didn't work it didn't got it did not go it did not end well if you had to bet do you think that his ai gamble is going to pay off i do and and i don't want to sound as I'm a patsy because you know you don't have patsies on the show right no well depends depends on your answer yeah here we go no pressure I would say that he he's definitely making a comeback this podcast is is taking place in the week that Masa has put in 500 million dollars into a six and a half billion dollar funding round for open ai by sam and that is the you know chat gtp is their big product and that is the biggest uh thing going around at the moment and must has been desperate to to get into uh chat gpt why do you think he waited so long like there's been so many funding rounds before and he's got the gravitas it seems very late stage for him he wanted to get in he couldn't get in sam altman kept him waiting really he must he must absolutely love that about sam altman as well you can just imagine him genuinely being like you know you've seen the the adam newman stuff play out as well he just loves people that are that crazy too right well it's true but you have to remember that in 2021 and 2022 masa was flat on his back.

21:22I mean, we'll probably go into a bit more about how he's almost gone bankrupt at least four or five times. But in 2021, 2022, you know, the SoftBank Vision Fund, this gigantic$100 billion fund, was sort of semi-underwater. SoftBank Vision Fund 2 was definitely underwater, totally in the red. And he'd made huge losses in options trading. so you know we'd had we work which would talk about this the you know the public thing so all this meant that you know his star had fallen and he wasn't necessarily he wasn't at the top table so he couldn't really get into that funding round he had some of the money but he's waited and now he's got 500 million so he's a second tier investor in chat gpt tell us tell us who the uh the least enjoyable interview you've ever done other than Putin.

22:18That's right, the most enjoyable in many ways. It's the most challenging. Who's the least enjoyable? I used to hate interviewing David Cameron because he'd always interrupt. And he'd always, it was as if he was patting you on the head saying, yes, yes, I know where you're coming from. It's the sort of person who says, let me tell you how this ends, this movie. And so I don't dislike David Cameron, but I didn't like interviewing him. did you find boris johnson any better worse but i've known boris johnson for 30 years i was a correspondent in brussels when boris was there he's a total charlatan and and i can't take him seriously and when i saw him in the foreign office he became foreign secretary i'm being very indiscreet here but what the hell i don't work for the ft anymore the first thing i said because you know he tried to say you don't believe in brexit and started trying to give me a lecture so I said well I think we should talk about your tax affairs in Brussels because we shared the same accountant that shut him up that's brilliant um you've said this is the hardest book you've ever written why is that if you do something about Japan and the Japanese and you don't speak the language that's tough if you're trying to get to a multi-billionaire who's totally secretive obsessed by his privacy and wants to control everything, that's tough.

23:45And I'm not a student of Japanese history either. I'm a student of American history. I've worked for 12 years in America. I know European history because I did that at school. So this was foreign to me. So I had to find ways of getting around that. And the first and most important was to get a researcher and through a great friend at Stanford University, now Neil Ferguson, the historian and author, he put me in touch with someone who, can you believe it, was Japanese-Korean like Masayoshi Son. And key point, he spoke English because he was so fed up with being a student in Japan, he went to the UK and he got into Eton.

24:29So my research is brilliant, talks too much, like most people from Eton. But it was brilliant. So there we are. So this is a story of the most secretive man, pretty much. One of the most secretive billionaires on earth. And you've written the definitive guide. So it's really a first opportunity for the public, for the curious, to have a deep, insightful peek inside the life of this crazy rich billionaire, Master Sun. And you chose a brilliant title, but you chose the name Gambling Man. so what were some of his big bets what led you to that title give us a little bit of a picture of why he's the gambling man yeah it's funny i met masa again in america in the summer and i was thinking what's he going to say when he sees that title and he said oh oh barber son i said yes hello masa son and he said gambling man huh why do you write gambling man and then he said oh maybe i'm gambling man actually amazing you're like the old wise sage for him you just have to look at him and he finds the answer within himself yeah i've outed it i well because first of all he's bet the company several times just saying you know i i want i want i'm gonna i'm gonna take a bet on software distribution in 1981 when he comes back from berkeley california where he finished his degree he can't get a bank loan and, you know, he's on his uppers, but he blows all the money from the bank loan on one exhibition where, you know, he's basically giving away the stuff.

26:13I mean, that is a lost leader kind of approach. Then, you know, the gamble, he went for Yahoo when it was not a household name and he's up against the VC giants like Sequoia. And he says, no, I'm not just going to put 20 i'm going to put 100 million and then when jerry yang who i interviewed the co-founder of yahoo says well we don't need 100 million and master says everybody needs 100 and by the way if you don't take 100 million i will put it in your competitor and i will kill you that's he's a pretty tough cookie on that respect and then obviously you know we work he on the office leasing company that adam newman created this jesus-like figure i mean you know he he just bet billions on that he came up with a stratospheric valuation of 4.7 million by the way he does when you talk about bets let's let's do something simple like how many people have you met that sign a billion dollar check after meeting somebody in after five minutes herman namarula the great entrepreneur in the uk he runs improbable that's right he goes on a plane he's hoping to get 50 million dollars from masa goes to tokyo masa gives him a 500 million dollar check i mean herman doesn't know what to do with the money so this is a guy you know who just he's sprayed he's he's he's made a lot of people rich by the way including the banks because they always charge because he takes such risks such a gambler they all charge extra on the fees so they're happy uh you know he's amazing i mean i came across just one other thing we're in this document we find the kevin costner dances with wolves connection and that's the one thing by the way they wouldn't answer one of the things they wouldn't answer is how come masa lent kevin costner 50 million dollars for some real estate venture in South Dakota next to Dances with Wolves because Kevin Costner was doing this gambling casino hotel development and Massa met him clearly and just said I'll give you a phone you know that's what it's like it's amazing let's talk about Alibaba first yeah you know you just listed some of his investments that wasn't one you listed so there's it's one of the most famous things in tech he invested 20 million dollars and that is it became one of the greatest investments ever what happened first of all he goes it's 1999 so we're near the top of the bubble and he goes to beijing and he goes speed dating and he brings about three or four of his chinese co-investors including somebody i've interviewed several times in san francisco a guy called hong Lu.

29:09And they meet this guy called Jack Ma, who's even smaller than Masa. Also a teacher. Also a teacher, a guide, by the way. Jerry Yang had met him about four years ago, I think. And Jack Ma talks about Alibaba. It's only about 15, 20 minute meeting. And Masa is the only person in the group of investors who says, I'm going to put money in Alibaba, in Jack Ma, because this guy Jack Ma is the real deal. So he puts in 20 million and then he comes in with 80 million a few months later. Goldman Sachs, by the way, had come in a few months earlier and put in a load of money. But Masa sticks with it. And, you know, 14 years later, this thing goes public and And Masa's stake is worth about, wait for it, 140 billion.

30:07Wow. Not bad. $20 million to 140 billion. It's nice money if you can make it. But Masa also influenced. And I talked to Joe Tsai, who's the co-founder of Alibaba, a great man. He's actually chairman of Alibaba now. And Joe was saying that actually, Jack Masa helped with the development of the business. He took an interest in the business. He didn't, in other words, put in the money, take five times earnings, and then quit. Actually, he believed in Alibaba, and he was the one who told them they had to do B2B. They had to take on, they could take on eBay and the likes of it. eBay, by the way, wanted to buy Alibaba.

30:50and he did a fantastic deal which i go into detail with yahoo where he kept his stake and uh and put in money into yahoo and this is incredibly complicated deal but i explain it and at the end jerry yang looks at co-founder yahoo looks at marson says i think you're my you know i'm your atm machine you've done so well i mean he's very clever on financial engineering and stuff where did where did the original money come from if you're making a 20 million dollar investment early on where were you getting an 80 million a few months later so you're talking about you know at least 100 million and presumably that's part of the money you don't make it all in one company where the hell does that kind of money come from at that point so just remember at that point the stock market's going up he's floating bonds on the stock market he's also got his stake in yahoo which is going up so crucially in 1998 i think it is he sells a bit of his yahoo stake when the stock is racing up so he's got money to spend right okay he's putting money everywhere there is another point i mean he was paying just think about this in the mid 90s he paid 800 million dollars for the top tech trade fair in america called comdex which was owned by a slightly tough guy shall we say bugsy malone type in las vegas called sheldon adelson um who owns the marina bay hotel is now deceased and sheldon adelson can't believe that massa's paying 800 million and everybody's saying is he's he's paying over the odds but what he's doing number one he's raising money on the japanese bond market and he's doing that when interest rates are rock bottom after the bubble crashed popped the real estate bubble in japan so in other words he's borrowing that's where he's getting his money to plus he's got the yahoo investment to answer your question.

33:04Can we go back a step? So, you know, you interviewed his father. He had this interesting childhood. He leaves at 14, sorry, at 16. You said, you know, he seemed like he was depressed at 14, etc. He wanted to get out and he moves to America. He learns English as a pivotal moment. So for people who are listening to and learning about a story like Master's Son in becoming one of the world's great visionary billionaires, I think what's interesting is that how do how does a regular person emulate that kind of early experience to go on that journey what were the sort of years between landing in America going to Berkeley and learning English and then having the money to invest in Yahoo what's that gap in that story because all the research I've ever done on Master Sun misses that it's murky yeah Yeah, it's really murky.

33:57There are a number of lessons. So first of all, find the point of differentiation. And in Japan, that clearly is learn English, because then you can be the gateway between America and Asia and America and Japan, which is a mass consumer market. But he's the guy, and I interviewed Bill Gates at some length, length who was selling software in japan in the early 80s and he meets masa and masa he describes it like a breath of fresh air because instead of you know spending all night in some bar where you talking to japanese who don't really speak english and you can't work out what's going on there's this little guy who's a big enthusiast and he speaks english so that point of differentiation really important.

34:47I think the second is figure out the big trend. What's really happening in the market? And for Masa, he arrives in California in the late 70s. Well, you guys know this. What's happening in the late 70s? The answer is the microprocessor and the personal computer. And Steve Jobs has launched Apple in the garage with Steve Wozniak. And, you know, Masa's aware of this, right so he's he's saying this is huge and by the way it's not something which is going to be a big deal for a couple of years this is going to be a big deal for decades and similarly with the internet and i think the third point which you know you guys know it's all about the network have you got people you know that are going to help you in trouble and masa he's known by the way his his I'll try and do the accent here.

35:47Chi-chi. You know what that means. Of course we do, yeah. Yeah. But for the audience. Okay. Old man killer. See? Yeah, I knew you knew that. Yeah, of course. My nickname for Chris. You don't look that old, Chris. He has a way of getting older people to be fascinated by him, to give him advice, to be a mentor, to stand him alone, to put up their house. And this is a feature of his life in the first two decades. So I would say to a lot of people out there, you know, having a mentor is really important. And if they've got some money, even better. Do you think there's almost something mystical and interesting and curious, you know, like ethnographically almost about him being a little Japanese guy in the West Coast when, And, you know, he's like you said, that sort of gateway to this massive market.

36:44It's unusual that you can speak English, have the same interest in the future trends, etc. You know, I know there's only a handful of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates is around anyway, but probably everyone kind of looked like them regardless. So there's this fascination of this person. Yeah. And it's the self-confidence that he has. He keeps talking about being a visionary. um but also and i would say this by the way about giving advice to people it does help if you've got a bit of a sense of humor and you know he consciously developed this image of being a bit of a joker a bit of a prankster and he has this story that in the early 2000s when he gets into launching broadband he can't get the regulations changed so he turns up at the telecoms ministry and says if you don't let me have my license i'm literally going to pour kerosene over myself and torch myself and the building at which point the frightened bureaucrat goes i'll get back to you and guess what the rails changed now when masa tells this story in california you know they all think it's hilarious because it's the little guy against the establishment they just love it and of course massa who knows american business culture and everything he's figured that out right so massa has thought of himself as napoleon so tell us about that what's that what's the takeaway from that for you well first time i heard this was when i was uh talking uh Off the record, I don't think that they, I won't say who it was, but Elliott Management, which is a very well-known activist hedge fund based in New York, you know, they're big.

38:35and they decide to take a stake in SoftBank in late 2019-20, partly because all this bad news, the stock price has gone down and they think, you know, if we can get them to take certain measures, clean up the board, bring in some new outsiders, do a stock buyback or whatever, then the stock price is going to go up and we're going to make money. So they go out to Tokyo and they've got this, essentially, a presentation, which is uh if you do this this is how your stock market go back and you can learn from warren buffett and and or indeed mark zuckerberg's meta you know or bill gates at microsoft look at the quality of the board and masa suddenly goes well i'm not i'm not like them i mean they're just one company businesses one sector i mean i'm i'm all over the place and i'm like napoleon or genghis khan or emperor chin of the great war yeah and these guys are going jesus we we you know we did a powerpoint on warren buffett we didn't do one for napoleon bonaparte um but he is he is obsessed by napoleon because napoleon is an empire builder and massa sees himself as an empire builder i'm in the eco tech ecosystem around the world and i've got stakes in 500 companies but also there's a couple of other points.

40:01One is that like Napoleon, he's an outsider. Napoleon is Corsican. He's not really French. Similarly, Masa is Korean. He's Japanese, but he's Korean. And I think that appeals to him. And then the other point is, you know, in fact, somebody, a great friend of mine from the West Coast emailed me last night and said, so you didn't realize that you were writing in fact a biography of Napoleon because he does overreach like Napoleon. who marched on Moscow in winter. And funnily enough, guess what? In his house, and I got him finally to admit this. He's got a painting of Napoleon with his generals on the retreat from Moscow with Moscow burning in the background.

40:45He thinks it's about loyalty of the generals and all his guests go, no, it's about overreach. Yeah, it didn't go so well for Napoleon, that one, did it? There's everything you need to know about him. So how does Massa keep finding these billion pound companies? How is he omnipresent in all of these unbelievable sectors? Yeah, the ultimate unicorn hunter. Yeah, and he's got a network again. By the way, it's important to note that 10 years ago or so, the company changed. He bought Sprint, the loss-making telecoms maker, and he hoped he got it all wrong for seven years. And finally, his grand plan to merge it with T-Mobile and create a third force in telecoms in America did come off.

41:33But at the same time, he's trying to go back into global investing. And he brings in people who have great contacts and networks. And a number of them are ex-Deutsche Bank, one of them being a financial magician by the name of Rajiv Misra. and through these contacts he gets into the gulf right where there's all the money the saudis uh the emiratis so masa is very good um if you get him on email by the way i won't give you exact email but by the way just tell it's very revealing off camera yeah i mean it's let's just say it's got big boss in there somewhere so it's very revealing about the old ego and everything and his tail fin on his plane by the way the real napoleon is tail fin on his plane by the way is one td guess what that stands for putting you on the spot here come on guys one trillion dollars you know i mean there's there's all the signs of the ego it's just it's it's slightly hidden you need to be for that yeah and he's though well for a japanese as well one of his visitors This secret home in central Tokyo, which is three conjoining houses with the 27 meter below basement with the artificial golf course.