Nikesh Arora steps down as Soft Bank president

Nikesh Arora stepped down from the post of president and chief operating officer of Soft Bank on Tuesday.

According to reports, Arora came under fire from shareholders over some of his controversial deals and compensation issues. Some investors had even questioned his qualifications.

Arora received a salary package of USD 73 million or Rs 500 crore in 2015-16, making him one of the top paid executives in the world for the second straight year.

Arora was appointed as president of Soft Bank in May, 2015 by owner Masayoshi Son. Since joining it, he had spent nearly USD 4 billion investing in startups around the world in a hunt for a break-through technology company capable of driving future growth.

SoftBank was established in Tokyo, Japan, on September 3, 1981. In May 2015, SoftBank was ranked in the Forbes Global 2000 list as the 62nd largest public company in the world. Between 2009 and 2014, SoftBank's market capitalization increased by 557 percent, the fourth largest relative increase in the world over that period.

At the beginning of 2015, the company was the third largest public company in Japan after Toyota and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial.

SoftBank's corporate profile includes various other companies such as Japanese broadband company SoftBank BB, data center company IDC Frontier, gaming company GungHo Online Entertainment, and the publishing company SB Creative.

Additionally, it has various partnerships in Japanese subsidiaries of foreign companies such as Yahoo!, E-Trade, Ustream.tv, EF Education First and Morningstar. SBI Group is a Japanese financial services company that began in 1999 as a branch of SoftBank.

SoftBank was the only official carrier of the iPhone in Japan until the release of iPhone 4S when it became available on au by KDDI as well.