[오~컬쳐]Tencent raises billions of dollars… Nexon NC’Mega Deal’ Ready

The news that Chinese IT company Tencent is preparing a trillion-unit’Mega Deal’ was reported. It is observed that the target is a large-scale game company or a company with global intellectual property rights (IP), and companies based in Korea or the United States are influential.

According to Roundhill Investments on the 22nd (Korean time), Tencent is considering acquiring a game company worth billions of dollars.

A view of the Tencent office building. (Photo = Captured Tencent website)

Roundhill said Tencent is in the process of raising funds to close this mega deal. He added that it is trying to find out the possibility by contacting local commercial banks to mobilize billions of dollars of funds.

Some local foreign media such as’TMT Finance News’ also reported, “There is a possibility that Tencent will acquire a large game company for the game business.”

In the game industry, attention has been focused on the companies that Tencent will acquire. Tencent showed its intention to participate in the sale of shares of NXC CEO Kim Jeong-joo in 2019, but has a history of giving up. It is also a point to consider taking over Nexon, which has IP of’Dungeon & Fighter (Dunpa)’ and establishing it as a subsidiary.

In China, as Dunpa remains popular enough to become the national game, the royalties paid annually to Nexon alone cost over 1 trillion won, so Tencent has no choice but to mess with the acquisition card. Some say that the delay in the release of’Dunpa Mobile’, which was scheduled to be released in August last year, is to proceed with the acquisition process. In fact, Nexon and Tencent planned to launch Dunpa Mobile locally, but it was temporarily suspended due to Chinese government regulations.

Dungeon & Fighter Mobile. (Photo = Nexon)

At the time, a Nexon official said, “We decided to postpone the release because we determined that an update to the in-game overimmersion prevention system was necessary,” but there is no progress until now, as it is 5 months. It is analyzed that if Tencent acquires Nexon, it will approach it in a different way than before the previous acquisition of NXC shares. It is expected to take over the headquarters of Nexon’s Japanese subsidiary and take only key business units such as Nexon Korea, a subsidiary.

In addition to Nexon, the game industry is currently debating leading companies such as NCsoft, Gravity, Zynga, and Super League Gaming as candidates for acquisition.

The source of this mega deal is the investment banking (IB) industry, but the possibility of realization is weighed in that Tencent has acquired a large number of global game companies and has grown in size. Tencent is reported to have increased the proportion of related investments by more than 300%, investing in 31 game companies last year alone. In particular, the acquisition war is expected to rise sharply as the fact that there has not been a trillion-dollar mega deal since’Supercell ($8.6 billion)’ acquired in 2016 and that the industrial growth trend will be prolonged due to the aftermath of Corona 19.

An official in the game industry said, “Tencent has risen to the top in global game market sales through its game-driven strategy several years ago.” I will be able to exercise.”