Softbank furthered its control over subsidiary Sprint with the appointment of Nikesh Arora to Sprint’s board of directors. Arora currently serves as vice chairman at Softbank and previously served as CEO of Softbank Internet and Media.
Arora’s appointment expands Sprint’s board to nine members.
“We’re very fortunate to have Nikesh join the Sprint board at this important juncture,” said Masayoshi Son, chairman of Sprint’s board of directors. “His broad experience and executive leadership in leading-edge technology companies will provide valuable insight and perspective to further Sprint’s growth and overall competitiveness.”
Prior to his time at Softbank, Arora served as chief business officer and a SVP at Google as well as a stint as CMO and a member of the board at T-Mobile Europe.
Softbank earlier this week posted a steep drop in operating profits partially attributed to Sprint, which itself posted mixed quarterly results.
Softbank late last week named current EVP and CTO Junichi Miyakawa to the newly created role of technical COO at Sprint. In the new position, Miyakawa will oversee the company’s network and technology organization, including related strategy, network operations and performance, and will lead Sprint’s relationships with “key network equipment vendors.” Miyakawa will report directly to Sprint’s recently installed CEO Marcelo Claure.
Sprint pointed to Miyakawa’s work on rolling out Softbank’s 2.5 GHz-based mobile services, a spectrum band that is the base for Sprint’s nascent Spark offering.
“Miyakawa-san transformed the SoftBank network in Japan and I’m confident that his expertise and leadership will help us do the same thing for Sprint customers,” said Claure in a statement. “We already have made substantial progress on the Sprint network and it is performing better every day. He will work directly with our network team as we continue to build out our network to take advantage of our strong and unique spectrum position.”
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