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Billionaire Taizo Son ditches Japan to start afresh in Singapore

SINGAPORE — Singapore may have just added a new tech billionaire, but it had to lure him from Japan first.

Taizo Son (right), Japan's Internet guru, seen here with AFP Chairman Emmanuel Hoog in a file photo from 2010.  Photo: AFP

Taizo Son (right), Japan's Internet guru, seen here with AFP Chairman Emmanuel Hoog in a file photo from 2010. Photo: AFP

SINGAPORE — Singapore may have just added a new tech billionaire, but it had to lure him from Japan first.

Mr Taizo Son, who built his fortune on hit smartphone game Puzzle & Dragons, has relocated from Tokyo and plans to invest US$100 million (S$139 million) in Southeast Asia within five years. The younger brother of SoftBank Group Corp’s founder said in Singapore on Monday (April 17) he had become frustrated by regulation in Japan as well as the country’s education system.

“I tried very hard by lobbying the Japanese government: ‘Why don’t we have a regulatory sandbox to bring some innovative ideas?’,” Mr Son told the event arranged by the private bank of DBS Group Holdings.

“But the country’s too big and very slow to move. But here, even the government, regulators are innovation-minded.”

Singapore’s high rate of internet use and a reliance on online data-processing has helped propel Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s Smart Nation initiative since it was launched in 2014. The programme has seen the government, agencies and companies look to use technology to change how things are done, from self-driving buses and traffic management to public transport fares that are charged automatically.

With little crime, low personal tax rates and no capital gains tax, the country has already drawn other billionaires, including Eduardo Saverin, a co-founder of Facebook.

Mr Son founded gamemaker GungHo Online Entertainment and is now chief executive officer of Mistletoe, a combination of early-stage venture firm, incubator and entrepreneur-in-residence programme.

His brother Masayoshi Son is chairman of SoftBank and is Japan’s second-richest man with a net worth of US$12.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

After moving to the wealthy enclave of Sentosa, Mr Son expects to receive his Singapore permanent residency within three months.

He was partly motivated by his three-year-old son after losing confidence in Japan’s education system, which he said has failed to adapt from the approach used to build the company into a post-war industrial giant.

The Japanese system is “extremely terrible” at creating entrepreneurs and Mr Son said he intends to open a school in Singapore after recently opening a new school near Tokyo that encourages children to learn without teachers.

Among his existing investments in the region is games and e-commerce operator Garena, the most valuable startup in South-east Asia.

At the event, Mr Son laid out his vision for a futuristic city where large vehicles go underground, commuting is done on personal mobility devices and people can shower with water purification systems the size of a suitcase.

“I’m getting an inspiration from Venice because inside Venice there is no car,” he said.

He added an aspiration to redesign cities away from the industrialised, car-centric model of the 20th century to one that is more “human-centric”. BLOOMBERG

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