Son also rises A rare, self-made business leader wants to revitalise Japan through telecoms

“THEY are the losers in battle. When you meet with them, they give all kinds of excuses. They blame the government; they blame the weather!” Masayoshi Son, the founder and boss of Softbank, Japan’s third-biggest telecoms operator, has little patience for the risk-averse managers of the country’s sluggish industrial behemoths. Entrepreneurs like him “don’t give excuses for how tough the battle is, and how tough the handicap is—we always fight.”