On January 28, the news of SoftBank Group's senior management team has changed again, and the company's COO Marcelo Crowley has left, and he has worked at SoftBank for 9 years, which is a pivotal position.
Marcelo Crowley with Son Zhengyi
It is reported that Crowley's departure was due to the recent demand that SoftBank Group pay him up to $2 billion in salary in the next few years, but Son Zhengyi did not approve of this matter, and serious differences occurred between the two sides.
After months of discussion, Son and SoftBank finally chose to abandon this "expensive" talent.
Marcelo Crowley was chairman of the board of directors of Brightstar, an American mobile phone distributor, and in 2013, SoftBank acquired Brightstar, which also joined SoftBank Group, and from 2014 to 2018, Marcelo Crowley served as CEO of Sprint, a telecommunications company owned by SoftBank Group, and facilitated Sprint's merger with another telecommunications company, T-Mobile.
In 2019, SoftBank's co-working startup Wework failed to go public, and the company's valuation shrank from $47 billion to less than $10 billion at one point, and the company's development was in jeopardy. Marcelo Crowley's role as a "firefighter" not only represented SoftBank in negotiating $180 million in compensation with WeWork founder Adam Neumann, but also personally joined WeWork as CEO to help WeWork out of adversity.
On October 21, 2021, WeWork successfully landed on the New York Stock Exchange through SPAC, and its current market value is $4.972 billion, although this result is only about one-tenth of WeWork's valuation that year, but at least it is already on the market and on track.
Based on the above experience, Marcelo Crowley believes that he will be worth a $2 billion salary in the next few years, but such a high salary is very rare in any technology company, and Marcelo Crowley is currently the highest paid person in the company.
In fiscal 2019, his total compensation amounted to 2.1 billion yen (about $18.2 million), an increase of 17% from fiscal 2018. At the same time, The salary of SoftBank founder Son Zhengyi was only $1.94 million.
Obviously, Son is already very good to Crowley, but the latter is not satisfied with the status quo.
After the two sides did not negotiate, Clarey's POSITION as CEO of SoftBank International has been replaced by someone else, and Son has appointed the company's president, Michelle Coombs, as CEO to succeed Clarey.
Son also issued a statement, writing: "Marcelo has made many contributions to SoftBank during his tenure at SoftBank, and we thank him for his dedication and wish him continued success in his future endeavours." I have a lot of confidence in Michelle Coombs and the excellent SoftBank team who will continue the great work we do at SoftBank International. ”
It seems that Son Zhengyi does not cherish Marcelo's hero, just as he did not miss his successor Nicosz Arora in 2016.
Son Zhengyi, 64, once said that he would retire at the age of 69, but now he has postponed his retirement period to after the age of 70.