Masayoshi Son, CEO and founder of SoftBank Group (pictured), was reported to have stepped down from the board of Alibaba today (25 June), the same day the Chinese e-commerce giant’s co-founder Jack Ma departed SoftBank’s board.

Son said the parting of ways was smooth and “perfectly amicable”, Bloomberg reported. Ma’s intention to resign was announced in May.

The moves came during SoftBank’s AGM, during which three new directors were confirmed at SoftBank’s AGM: CFO Yoshimoto Goto; Tan Lip-Bu, CEO of chip design software company Cadence Design Systems; and Yuko Kawamoto, a professor at Waseda Business School.

Bloomberg reported Son invested $20 million in Alibaba in 2002 when it was a start-up and joined the board in 2005: the value of the stake grew to more than $150 billion. Ma became a SoftBank director in 2007.

SoftBank is on a mission to sell JPY4.5 trillion ($42 billion) in assets to reduce debt and buy-back JPY2 trillion worth of shares, after recording a JPY961.6 billion loss in the year to end-March.

The company reduced its stake in Alibaba from 32.2 per cent to 28 per cent in June 2016.