Meet Ron Fisher, the SoftBank executive who awarded WeWork a $47 billion valuation months before it delayed its $10 billion IPO
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It's not clear if Ron Fisher's billion-dollar gamble will pay off.
The SoftBank executive sits on WeWork's all-male board, having led the Vision Fund's multiple investments in the startup since 2017. As the Vice Chairman and Head of Investment at SoftBank Group, Fisher, 71, is one of the most senior employees overseeing SoftBank's first $100 billion Vision Fund, and the firm's WeWork investment could very well be his legacy.Read More: The history of WeWork's meteoric valuation rise - and fall
Now, Fisher's investment looks precarious, at best. After pouring billions in private funding into WeWork, the buzzy startup has decided to delay its public offering originally planned for the end of September. Once valued at $47 billion, the startup is now reportedly considering listing at a significantly discounted valuation of around $10 billion.As one of only six board members, Fisher is in the unique position of knowing what might come next for the beleaguered real estate startup. But he may have sacrificed a lot to get there.
Here is what we know about Fisher, the SoftBank executive who led Vision Fund's controversial investment in WeWork.Fisher is also the Vice Chairman of telecommunications company Sprint, which is owned by SoftBank. And he is a director at chip design firm Arm Holdings and sports e-commerce site Fanatics, both SoftBank investments.
"Early on, as the idea for the Vision Fund developed, there was a question as to whether we'd find enough companies and founders of the quality and scale we were after," Fisher said in an interview posted on SoftBank's website.
"What we've found is that there are more interesting opportunities than even a fund like ours can possibly support. Our objective is to partner with companies that are transforming industries across the globe, where our resources and people will make a difference for them," he says.
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