SoftBank Group Corp. on June 1 appointed Katsunori Sago, Rajeev Misra and Marcelo Claure as executive vice presidents of the company's board of directors.
Sago, who was named to SoftBank's board in April, will also assume the role of chief strategy officer. Meanwhile, Misra will remain CEO of SB Investment Advisers, or the SoftBank Vision Fund.
Claure, who has been on SoftBank's board since June 2017, was recently appointed COO of SoftBank Group and CEO of SoftBank Group International. He is leaving his CEO role at Sprint Corp. to become the SoftBank unit's executive chairman, pending a proposed merger with T-Mobile US Inc.
The appointments, which are subject to the approval of SoftBank's shareholders in a June 20 meeting, has set off speculation of a three-way race to succeed SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, The Nikkei reported.
Former SoftBank President and COO Nikesh Arora, who was supposed to take over the CEO post upon Son's retirement, left the Japanese conglomerate in July 2016 after Son changed his mind about retiring. Arora is set to run cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks Inc. as its new CEO and board chairman, beginning June 6.
