SoftBank’s London staff are spectacularly well compensated
SoftBank Investment Advisors may have been taking a scythe to its staff, but there are still upsides to working there. Its London office pays well. Really well.
A new Companies House filing for the year ending 31st of March 2022 indicates that SB Investment Advisors spent £131m ($158m) on wages and salaries for the year ending the 31st of March 2022. With a staff of 150 over the same period, average compensation per employee stands at £876k ($1.1m), an increase from the average of £776k ($936k) of last year.
SB Investment Advisors manages the Vision Funds, the two titanic investment funds that SoftBank is probably best known for. It includes a team of 51 “investment and operating” staff and another 99 people in “control and support" functions. Investment staff are likely to be by far the best paid.
SB Investment Advisors has had a difficult year. The Vision Funds had huge losses - and made huge layoffs, some 30% of total global staff. The losses were also huge - $23bn in the second quarter of 2022, on top of the $19bn lost earlier in the year. The company's stock has fallen 50% since its peak in February 2021.
Although the first Vision Fund was primarily funded by Gulf Arab investment funds, its sequel – the ingeniously named Vision Fund 2 – was entirely funded from within SoftBank, mostly due to the fundraising coinciding with the insane saga that was the WeWork debacle. Insider reported that the start-up’s valuation fell by nearly 90% (nearly $40bn) within six months.
There was little evidence of big losses in the year to March, however - on revenues of over £500m, the London division reported a bottom line profit of £88m, compared to a huge loss of £141m in the year before. It didn't do enough to save Rajeev Misra, though - Bloomberg reported in August that he stepped aside due to the Japanese firm's record losses.
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