PIO & ex-Google VP is SoftBank chief

Tokyo: Person of India origin (PIO) and former Google executive Nikesh Arora has been appointed the President of Japan's telecommunications giant SoftBank Corp that paid the "rising star" a whopping USD 135 million for the financial year 2014.

Arora, 47, who earlier held the vice-president's post, was appointed company president and chief operating officer at a general meeting of shareholders here yesterday.

In a management reshuffle last month, Arora - then investments head - was named as a potential successor to company chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son, as the telecoms conglomerate steps up its overseas expansion.

Arora joined the Japanese company just last September.

He was previously chief business officer of Google Inc., which he entered in 2004 as a telecom industry analyst before being recruited by Son.

Hailed by Son as a "rising star", Arora received 16.556 billion yen (nearly USD 135 million) for the period through March, 2015.

Of the total, 14.6 billion yen was paid as an entering bonus and compensation for his work as an executive at a SoftBank subsidiary, the Asahi Shimbun reported on Saturday, citing the conglomerate's latest financial report.

Unlike elsewhere in the world, there are few business executives in Japan who are paid several billions of yen a year and rare for a Japanese company to pay more than 16 billion yen annually to an executive, it said.

In less than a year at SoftBank, Arora has already directed about 200 billion yen (USD 1.67 billion) worth of deals that include investments in Indian technology startups Snapdeal, an online marketplace, and taxi-booking service Ola Cabs, Nikkei Business Daily reported.