SoftBank has lifted the lid for the first time on “SB Northstar”, the new unit set up to play the market in tech stocks, and revealed that it has racked up trading losses of $3.7bn so far.
Until now, SoftBank has shrouded the unit in secrecy, declining to say who was in charge of the unit or what its decision-making process was, after the FT revealed that it was the so-called “Nasdaq whale” buying billions of dollars of derivatives on US tech stocks over the summer.
On Wednesday, however, SoftBank said that Akshay Naheta, a 39-year-old former Deutsche Bank trader now based in Abu Dhabi, manages SB Northstar, which is registered in the Cayman Islands. SoftBank executives previously told the FT that Mr Naheta was not formally in charge.