Rajeev Misra to launch new $6bn fund backed by Abu Dhabi

Rajeev Misra, the trader who helped transform Japan’s SoftBank into the biggest and most controversial technology investor, is launching a new $6bn fund backed by a trio of Abu Dhabi investment groups.

Misra, a former Deutsche Bank and UBS executive, told the Financial Times on Thursday that he would remain involved with SoftBank at a senior level but that he was excited for his new venture.

The new fund will be backed by Abu Dhabi’s state investment funds Mubadala and ADQ, as well as Royal Group, the conglomerate chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al Nahyan, the UAE’s national security adviser, Misra said.

Sheikh Tahnoon, who is a brother of the UAE’s president, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, is also the chair of ADQ, one of Abu Dhabi’s newest and most active investment vehicles.

Misra has spent increasing amounts of time in recent years with Sheikh Tahnoon, one of the UAE’s most powerful figures who also overseas a sprawling business empire, people with knowledge of the matter said.

SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son told staff in a memo on Thursday that Misra was stepping back from the group “to build and run a new external multi-asset investment fund” that would have a broader remit than SoftBank’s two Vision funds.

Misra is still planning to remain the chief executive of SoftBank Investment Advisers, the unit that oversees much of the Japanese group’s private investing. However, he will relinquish his role in running SoftBank’s second Vision Fund.

The shake-up underscores the unrest inside SoftBank as the company’s reputation has been ravaged by a series of poor investments and a culture marked by internal turmoil and a high level of turnovers among senior leadership.

“We recently passed the five-year anniversary of the formation of the SoftBank Vision Fund . . . We pioneered a new approach to investing, partnered with more than 450 companies and helped take more than 40 companies public around the world,” Son said in the memo.

“None of that would have been possible without the partnership, imagination and talent of Rajeev, and I have been exceptionally fortunate to have him by my side for the last eight years,” he added.