Book rewiew: “Gambling Man – The Wild Ride of Japan’s Masayoshi Son”
Content:
This was clearly one of my “must read” books in 2024. The author, Lionel Barber, is the former editor of the financial times and as such clearly has access to people who might have otherwise not spoken to a more unknown journalists.
The book goes back to Masa-son’s very humble roots as part of the Korean minority in Japan which clearly was not an easy childhood. His father earned the first money by breeding pigs in their garden in a “slummy” area in their hometown. The father seems to have been quite an entrepreneurial character himself, moving into “loan sharhing” and then into Pachinko, low scale gambling game very popular in Japan. Similar to Masa later, his father used risky leverage and often risked it all to win. In any case, the family got decently rich with these gambling halls.
value and opportunity 