Nikesh Arora is the President & Chief Operating Officer of SoftBank Corporation, and was a former Google executive.
Education
Born to an Indian Air Force officer, Arora graduated from the Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University (now Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University) Varanasi), India with a bachelor"s degree in Electrical Engineering in 1989. He holds a degree from Boston College and an Master of Business Administration from Northeastern University. He also holds the CFA designation.
Career
SoftBank Corporation President & Chief Operating Officer of SoftBank Corporation Arora was paid a record amount of $135 million to lead Softbank’s operations. This pay package made him world’s 3rd highest paid executive.
Google Arora joined Google in 2004.
He held multiple senior operating leadership roles at Google, serving as President, Global Sales Operations and Business Development from 2009 to 2010, President Europe, Middle East and Africa from 2007 to 2009 and Vice President, Europe Operations from 2004 to 2007. He was Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer of Google Incorporated.
(Google) since January 2011 until July 2014. He left Google in July 2014 resigning from the post of Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer.
Other experiences Arora served on the board of directors at Colgate-Palmolive Company from March 8, 2012. until his resignation on September 10, 2014. and serves as a Trustee at the Paley Center for Media in Los Angeles, California.
Since 2007, Arora has also served as a Senior Advisor to Silver Lake Partners, a private equity firm. Arora began his career at Fidelity Investments in 1992, holding a variety of finance and technology management positions, ultimately serving as Vice President, Finance of Fidelity Technologies. Nikesh Arora worked for Deutsche Telekom, Putnam Investments and Fidelity Investments.
In 2006, during the Apax fraud, Arora was placed by investors TPG and Apax on the board of WIND Hellas (formerly TIM Hellas).
Under Arora"s direction, €1.6 billion were embezzled from TIM Hellas by misuse of company debts, a ransack operation codenamed ‘Project Troy’ by the official liquidator. TPG and Apax were condemned in 2014 by a New York court to repay $565 million to the private investors.
In 2014, the Luxembourg liquidator sued TPG and Apax for 1.3 billion corresponding to the amount not recovered from the Arora embezzlement. The Greek general prosecutor opened an investigation against TPG, Apax and all main implicated parties including Arora under art.1608/1950 of the Greek criminal code for "Crimes against the people of Greece”.
Membership
Arora worked as Chief Marketing Officer and as a Member of the Management Board at T-Mobile, Bharti Airtel, Europe.