SoftBank Corp. Promoted Its COO to Chairman While Keeping the Outgoing Chairman on Board as a Reduced Advisor.

On January 29, 2026, SoftBank Corp. announced that effective April 1, Yasuyuki Imai would step down as Chairman and become Director & Special Advisor. Jun Shimba, currently Representative Director & COO, would become Chairman. Junichi Miyakawa would continue as President & CEO.

What matters structurally is what Imai did after stepping down. He did not leave the board. He stayed as Director, but in an explicitly advisory role. The company said he would "engage in external activities and support the succession to the new management structure." He was scheduled to leave the board entirely at the June 2026 shareholder meeting.

This is a staged exit, not a clean handoff. For two months, Imai still had board voting rights even though he no longer held operational authority. Shimba owned the Chairman title but would need board approval for major decisions. That overlap created a window where the outgoing chairman could technically object to the new one, even if only symbolically.

SoftBank had done this before. In February 2024, Ken Miyauchi stepped down from Chairman and became Director & Special Advisor, with Imai taking the Chairman role. History repeated: the displaced executive stayed on board in reduced capacity.

The pattern suggests SoftBank treats the board transition as a process, not an event. Rather than hire a new chairman from outside or force the old one off immediately, the company uses a staged model: give up the executive title, keep the board seat, then leave at the annual meeting. This protects knowledge transfer and gives the incoming chairman cover—if something goes wrong in those first two months, the previous chairman is still technically available to weigh in.

What I would look for: whether Imai actually advises Shimba during those two months or becomes purely ceremonial. Whether other board members consult him or treat his input as unwelcome. Whether this staged-exit pattern continues when Shimba eventually steps down.

The bigger lesson is that control comes in layers. Losing the title is not the same as losing the board seat, and losing the board seat is not the same as losing influence.