SoftBank Group Corp. said Friday that Fast Retailing Co. Chairman and CEO Tadashi Yanai will resign as an outside director of the Japanese investment and telecommunication giant at the end of the year.

SoftBank Group said Yanai will leave the company's board Tuesday as he indicated his desire to concentrate on clothing business at Fast Retailing. Yanai has been serving as a SoftBank outside director since June 2001.

Yanai, who has led the operator of the Uniqlo casual clothing chain for 35 years, has sometimes taken a harsh stance toward SoftBank Group Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son's rapid business expansion policy.

His departure comes after Son announced last month that SoftBank Group had posted its largest-ever quarterly operating loss in the July to September period due to devaluation of the embattled U.S. operator of office-sharing startup WeWork.

"We have scary Yanai and I've always been scolded by him," Son joked at a November press conference to release the earnings results.

==Kyodo

© Kyodo News International, Inc., source Newswire