Ruwan Weerasekera (pictured) has departed from his chief operating officer (COO) role at SoftBank Investment Advisers (SBIA), which oversees Japan-based internet and telecommunications group SoftBank’s Vision Funds, Bloomberg reported yesterday.
SoftBank spokesperson Andrew Kovacs confirmed the departure of Weerasekera, who was also a managing partner for Vision Fund I and II. He joined SBIA in late 2017 after more than two decades at investment banking group UBS in several senior roles.
Neil Hadley, SBIA chief executive Rajeev Misra’s chief of staff, will assume the COO position along with his existing responsibilities. Kovacs added that Penny Anne Bodle, a partner and global head of investor relations, has also left SBIA.
SBIA operating partner Avi Golan moved to facial recognition technology producer AnyVision as its new CEO at the start of this month, following the departure of chief risk officer Maria Khan in September.
Khan has since joined Eight Roads, a venture capital arm of investment and financial services group Fidelity, as head of risk and compliance.
Private equity firm Gores Group has meanwhile brought SBIA partners Ted Fike and Justin Wilson on board as senior managing directors. They will focus on special purpose acquisitions companies, according to a report by Axios that was confirmed by Kovacs.
Fike’s investments included petsitting service Wag, before SoftBank divested its stake in the company in December 2019 at a loss, while Wilson led investments in Brandless, the e-commerce platform that ceased operations in February this year.
Another Vision Fund member, Carolina Brochado, quit SBIA soon after she was made a partner in March 2020. Her move came in the wake of multiple executive exits including founding partner David Thévenon and managing directors Praveen Akkiraju and Michael Ronen.
SoftBank raised $98.6bn for the initial Vision Fund in late 2018, which logged $16.8bn in deficits in the 2019 fiscal year. Its second vehicle is expected to close at a much smaller size, and SBIA was reported in June to be looking to cut its team by 15%.
Photo of Ruwan Weerasekera courtesy of LinkedIn.
