Billionaire explains what it was like to lose $70 billion in one go

Only around 1 in 4 million people get to experience what it’s like to be a billionaire in their lifetime.

So, the rest of us will never know the feeling of immense wealth – or, what it’s like to lose a mind-boggling sum all in one go.

Unlike Masayoshi Son, who was the Chief Executive Officer of SoftBank in the 90s, who had the misfortune of losing $70 billion in one day.

SoftBank is a holding company involved in tech space, and at one time Son’s net worth was rising at the rate of $10 billion a week.

Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter

However, after briefly surpassing Bill Gates’s personal wealth, the collapse of the dot-com bubble saw him lose $70 billion, which marks the single biggest financial loss anyone has ever suffered.

Son is still a billionaire, despite losing $70billionYoshikazu Tsuno/AFP via Getty

He recently spoke on an episode of The David Rubenstein Show, saying: "My personal net worth was increasing by $10 billion per week."

"Then I became richer than Bill Gates. Before I talked to anyone else, our stock started crashing. So six months after that our share price went down 99 per cent."

Son is still a billionaire today, so it’s not all bad.

"We almost went bankrupt and somehow I survived," he said, explaining that he then began making a series of less risky investments including Vodafone in Japan.

"That time I said 'now is the time to go to the next stage', which is the… mobile internet. So, I had to go get the license of the government for the Spectrum or acquire Vodafone Japan."

"I convinced the bank that I can turn around Vodafone Japan and it will become successful with great cash flow. They believed me and lent me money."

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.