Marcelo Claure

Raul Marcelo Claure is a Bolivian-American technology entrepreneur, businessman, and investor.[1] Currently the chief executive officer (CEO) of SoftBank Group International and chief operating officer (COO) of SoftBank Group Corporation,[2] he oversees SoftBank's operations and strategy along with CEO Masayoshi Son.[3] As COO of SoftBank Group, a technology investment company, Claure oversees portfolio companies such as Boston Dynamics, Arm Holdings, Fortress,[4][5] SB Energy, and WeWork.[3] Claure is a SoftBank Group Investment Committee member.[6] He also heads the $5 billion[1] SoftBank Latin America Fund[7] and SB Opportunity Fund, a $100 million fund dedicated to investing in entrepreneurs of color. He is executive chairman of WeWork.[8]

Marcelo Claure
Claure in 2019
Born (1970-12-09) 9 December 1970
La Paz, Bolivia
Nationality
  • Bolivian
  • American
Alma materBentley University (BS)
OccupationTechnology entrepreneur, investor, philanthropist
Title
Board member of
Spouse(s)Jordan Engard

Claure previously served as Sprint's President and CEO from 2014[2][9][10] until 2018,[3] and as executive chairman from 2018[11] until 2020.[12] Credited with having "led a turnaround" at Sprint,[13] he oversaw the company's planned merger with T-Mobile USA.[3][11] He currently sits on the board of the combined company.[12] Prior to joining Sprint, Claure founded the wireless services company Brightstar in 1997,[14] which ranked as the largest Hispanic-owned business in the United States for six years.[15] Brightstar had revenues of $10 billion when Claure sold it to Sprint in 2014.[16]

Claure serves as chairman of Fortress[17] and was most recently appointed as Vice Chairman of the newly combined Televisa-Univision Holdings. Additionally, he serves on the board of directors of Arm.[17] Claure is owner of the soccer team Club Bolivar; chairman and co-owner of Girona FC since August 2020.[18] Claure is also involved in philanthropy. In his role at Brightstar, he helped launch One Laptop Per Child[19] and as CEO of Sprint, he created the 1Million Project Foundation. Both initiatives provide computer access to students.[20]

Early life and education

Raúl Marcelo Claure was born in Guatemala on December 9, 1970[2] to Bolivian parents. At the time of his birth, Claure's father worked as a geologist for the United Nations.[21] When he was two years old his family moved to Morocco, then to the Dominican Republic before moving to La Paz, Bolivia, where Claure spent most of his childhood.[16] He attended the Instituto Domingo Savio school and later transferred to the American Cooperative School in La Paz, graduating in 1989. Later that year, he left La Paz to attend what was then the University of Lowell, in Lowell, Massachusetts.[16] He subsequently transferred to Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts, graduating in 1993 with a Bachelor of Science in Economics and Finance.[21] He has an Honorary Doctorate of Commercial Sciences from Bentley University.[15]

Business career

Claure returned to La Paz after graduating college and joined the Bolivian Football Federation as the head of business operations.[22] In 1995, he returned to the United States and bought USA Wireless, a cellular retailer.[16] He expanded the company before selling it one year later.[21] In 1996, Claure became President of Small World Communications, a California-based communications and distribution company.[23] He led the company for two years before relocating to Miami, Florida.[21]

Brightstar CEO

Claure founded Brightstar in Miami in October 1997, initially focusing the wireless distributor and service provider on Latin America.[21] After persuading Bell Canada to acquire a larger amount of phones than necessary, Claure and his business partner David Peterson made profit by reselling Bell Canada's Motorola surplus in the United States. This was possible thanks to the higher prices charged by Motorola in the U.S. than in Canada.[24]. With Claure as CEO,[17] the company opened offices throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

In 2001, the company entered a distribution agreement with Motorola for all of Latin America, subsequently signing a global distribution agreement in 2007.[21] With Claure retaining ownership,[16] Brightstar was named the largest Hispanic-owned business in the United States in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2013.[15] Inc. Magazine identified Brightstar as the sixth fastest-growing company in the United States in 2009,[25] and in 2013, Forbes ranked it the 55th largest privately held company in the United States.[26] SoftBank, based in Tokyo, Japan,[13] purchased Brightstar in 2013[2] for $1.26 billion.[16]

Brightstar acquired 20:20 Mobile in February 2014, becoming the owner of additional facilities throughout Europe. Also, in April 2014, Brightstar acquired the Commerce & Services Division of SoftBank Group, making Brightstar the primary global distributor for the SoftBank Selection brand of mobile products.[27] Brightstar by 2014 had a local presence in approximately 50 countries on six continents.[9][10] When Claure sold the entirety of the company to Sprint in 2014, Brightstar had revenues of $10 billion.[16] SoftBank subsequently sold a majority stake in Brightstar to Brightstar Capital Partners, a private equity firm, in 2020.[28]

Sprint CEO and executive chairman

Claure joined the Sprint Corporation board of directors in January 2014.[29] On August 5, 2014, he was selected to replace Dan Hesse as the head of Sprint Corporation. The announcement was made on August 6, 2014, coinciding with Bolivia's independence day.[9][10] Claure became Sprint's President and CEO on August 11, 2014.[29] According to Bloomberg, as CEO Claure "led a turnaround" of the company,[13] which had been losing $3.3 billion annually.[16] Claure focused on financial cuts and increasing customers, and by 2015 the company's stock price was rising modestly after falling to historic lows under his tenure.[16] During Claure's tenure, Sprint went from losing customers to gaining over 2 million. In addition to achieving its best financial results in company history, the company was also net income positive for the first time in 11 years.[30]

Joining the SoftBank Group board in June 2017,[17] Claure was named executive chairman of Sprint Corporation on May 2, 2018.[21] Succeeded as Sprint CEO by Michel Combes,[29] Claure assumed the chairmanship on May 31, 2018 – about one month after Sprint and T-Mobile announced plans to merge. In this role he became focused on achieving regulatory approval for the merger from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the United States Department of Justice (DOJ).[21] After Sprint and T-Mobile completed their merger in April 2020, Claure was appointed to the Board of Directors of T-Mobile.[12] In June 2020, Claure led the second largest secondary offering in US history through the SoftBank sale of $14.8 billion in T-Mobile US shares.[31]

SoftBank Group International CEO and SoftBank Group COO

On May 2, 2018, Claure was appointed the COO of SoftBank Group, also becoming CEO of both SoftBank Group International[29] and SoftBank Latin America.[7][32][33] Bloomberg described the promotions as a "reward for salvaging a sinking ship" at Sprint, with Claure continuing to oversee the plans to merge Sprint and T-Mobile.[32] Alongside SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, Claure began overseeing the company's overall business strategy.[29] As COO of SoftBank Group Corp,[34] Claure was given oversight of operating companies[5] such as Boston Dynamics, Arm Holdings, Sprint, Fortress, Brightstar,[5][35] SB Energy, and WeWork among others.[3] In March 2019 Claure also became CEO[7][35] of the newly formed $5 billion SoftBank Latin America Fund,[5] considered the largest technology fund focused exclusively on the Latin American market.[7][35] He also heads the SB Opportunity Fund, a $100 million fund launched in 2020 dedicated to investing in entrepreneurs of color. In November 2020, Claure and three other executives resigned from the SoftBank Group board, with Masayoshi Son stating the move was to "improve the perception of board independence."[36]

In January 2021, a blank check firm (SPAC) backed by Claure was aiming to raise $200 million through an IPO, with Claure to become CEO of LDH Growth.[37] Also in January 2021, he began overseeing the SoftBank Miami Initiative, a $100 million funding program dedicated to startups based in or relocating to Miami.[38][39]

WeWork executive chairman

In October 2019, Claure was appointed executive chairman of the board of WeWork, a workspace provider.[40] Claure works alongside Sandeep Mathrani, who he appointed as WeWork’s CEO in February 2020.[41] In March 2021, WeWork announced a definitive agreement to become a publicly traded company via SPAC Merger with BowX Acquisition Corp.[42]

Soccer franchises
Club Bolivar

In 2008, Claure created Bolivar Administración, Inversiones y Servicios Asociados, S.R.L. (BAISA),[17] an ownership group which owns the right to operate Club Bolivar for twenty years.[43] Club Bolivar is the popular soccer club in Bolivia,[44][45] and one of the top five winning teams in the history of the country.[46] Under Claure in 2014, the team reached the semi final of the Copa Libertadores in South American.[47] In 2021, with Claure as president, Club Bolivar announced becoming the first Partner Club of City Football Group.[48] Also in January 2021, Claure announced Club Bolivar's Plan Centenario, a five-year plan to construct a soccer academy and open the club's ownership to fans.[49]

Inter Miami CF

In 2012,[2] Claure partnered with David Beckham and Simon Fuller in launching Miami Beckham United (MBU), which sought to establish a Major League Soccer franchise in Miami.[29] On January 29, 2018, MLS Commissioner Don Garber announced in a live broadcast that MBU had been awarded the 25th franchise in the league. The press conference at the Arsht Center had attendance of over 1,700, becoming "a carnival-like gathering in downtown Miami while confetti rained down and soccer enthusiasts chanted and cheered."[50] The team name was revealed on September 5, 2018 as Club Internacional de Fútbol Miami, or Inter Miami CF. With the team slated to play in 2020, MBU at the time had proposed building a 25,000-seat stadium near Miami International Airport.[50]

On September 17, 2021, it was announced that Beckham and the Mas brothers had bought out Claure and Son's stakes in the ownership group.[51] Ares Management was also added to the ownership group.[52]

Girona FC

More recently, in August 2020,[18] Claure invested in Girona FC in Spain, partnering with City Football Group to promote the team and becoming a board member.[53]

Boards and committees

Claure is a member of the board at T-Mobile USA.[1] He also serves as executive chairman of WeWork.[8] He joined the board of Univision Holdings in November 2020.[54] In 2018 Claure joined the board of Arm Limited,[17] a semiconductor company.[29] He became the chairman of both Fortress and Brightstar Global Group Inc. in 2019[17] and is also on the boards of the Bolivian-American Chamber of Commerce and Florida International University.[4][55] Claure was in the Aspen Institute's 2016 class of Henry Crown Fellows and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.[3] He is a member of the Group of Fifty and the Presidential CEO Advisory Board at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[55]

Philanthropy

In 2008, Claure and Brighstar helped[56] Nicholas Negroponte found One Laptop Per Child, an organization that provides rugged, low-cost laptops to impoverished grade-school students.[19][57] By 2019, One Laptop Per Child had delivered 2.5 million computers to students in 60 countries.[58] In 2016, Claure created the 1Million Project Foundation in partnership with the Sprint Corporation.[20] The Foundation aims to provide free computer and internet access to a million disadvantaged students in the United States.[59] After the merger with T-Mobile, the goal grew to ten million students and it was renamed Project 10Million.[60]

Awards and recognition

Claure has won a number of business awards. A World Economic Forum (WEF) Young Global Leader, he was named an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year and is a lifetime member of Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year Hall of Fame.[23] He is a CEO Council Member for the Wall Street Journal.[61] In 2016, Claure appeared in the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Great Immigrants: The Pride of America initiative.[29]

Controversies

Claure was hired as head of business operations of the Bolivian Football Federation by Guido Loayza, the federation's newly appointed president.[62] In 2010, Carlos Chávez, a former president of the Bolivian Football Federation, asserted that Claure and Loayza were responsible of embezzlement through the sale of tickets for Bolivia’s 1994 World Cup matches on the black market.[63][64]

Under Claure's leadership, Brightstar was granted a contract by Telstra, an Australian then-state-owned telecommunications company, with the intent of becoming its exclusive mobile phone supplier.[65] The contract was awarded by then CEO of Telstra and mentor of Claure, Sol Trujillo.[66] According to The Australian, Telstra was set to pay between two and three times industry rates for phones.[67] In 2015, Claure, acting as CEO of Sprint Corporation, hired a team of consultants led by Trujillo that was paid at a minimum US$25 million for advice regarding network quality improvement that was for the most part unused.[68][69]

Since late 2021, Claure and Softbank have been involved in a pay dispute. According to four people with knowledge of the discussions who were not authorized to speak publicly on the issue, Claure is seeking US$2 billion in compensation over the next several years for his work regarding SoftBank's investments.[70]

Personal life

Claure resides in Miami, Florida. He has six children,[2] including four daughters with his wife Jordan Engard, whom he married in 2005.[16] He has a son and a daughter from a previous marriage.[71][16] Claure is Catholic.[16]

See also

References
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  63. "Acusan a Guido Loayza de negociado de nueve millones de dólares en 1994". lostiempos.com/. Los Tiempos. 5 May 2010. Retrieved 7 December 2021. Carlos Chávez, acusó al ex directivo nacional, Guido Loayza, y al actual dueño del club Bolívar, Marcelo Claure, de haberse beneficiado de nueve millones de dólares por la venta en el mercado negro de 12.000 boletos en el Mundial de 1994.
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  65. Guan, Lilia (17 March 2006). "Roadhound MD attacks Telstra's Brightstar deal". itnews.com.au/. ITnews. Retrieved 8 December 2021. the contract, which gives Brightstar exclusive rights to manage Telstra handsets to its dealers.
  66. Pullar-Strecker, Tom (3 December 2010). "Phone buyers wearing cost of deal". stuff.co.nz/. Stuff. Retrieved 8 December 2021. former Telstra chief executive Sol Trujillo was a "longtime friend and business mentor" of Brightstar chief Marcelo Claure
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