The Vision Fund needs more governance

ALMOST TWO years ago Masayoshi Son, a Japanese tycoon, broke all the rules of investing by setting up a new vehicle to back tech firms. The Vision Fund was unusual in several ways. Worth $100bn, it was enormous. Some $45bn of that came from Muhammad bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, who got the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund to contribute. It took huge bets on trendy “unicorns”—unlisted firms worth over a billion dollars, such as Uber. And it gave almost total control to Mr Son.Many sceptics dismissed the Vision Fund as a vast pot of tainted money squandered on hyped-up assets. And by October last year it looked as if they were right. The murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist, cast Saudi Arabia and the fund into disrepute, while the shares of tech firms started to tank.