Naver announced on the 23rd that its subsidiary, Line, acquired one share of LINE Split Preparation, which is a’Line Split Preparation Co., Ltd.’ for about KRW 7683 billion.
Naver also announced that Line Split Preparation will acquire 4,942670 shares of Naver’s subsidiary Line Plus for 4454 billion won.
Line will own 100% (13,301 shares) of Line Split Preparation, and Line Split Preparation will own 100% (4942,670 shares) of Line Plus.
Line announced that it would merge with another management integration preparation company Shiodome Z Holdings.
Naver explained, “It is a process of arranging the stake relations of LINE subsidiaries and succeeding or transferring a company that prepares for division.”
Naver will hold a general shareholders meeting scheduled for the merger in February next year.
SoftBank, the parent company of Naver and Z Holdings, decided to integrate the management of Line and Yahoo Japan at the end of last year, and started to change the governance structure.
On the 15th, Line held an extraordinary general shareholders’ meeting and passed a stock merger plan to integrate Z Holdings’ management with Yahoo Japan. Accordingly, on the 29th, Line will be delisted on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
Both companies are voluntarily delisting all line stocks on the market, incorporating Line as a consolidated subsidiary of SoftBank, and reorganizing all of Line’s business to Z Holdings. Z Holdings is dominated by A Holdings, a joint venture with 50-50 shares of Naver and Softbank. The first chairman of A Holdings will be Lee Hae-jin, Naver’s GIO (Global Investment Manager), and this GIO will also be co-president with Softbank’s Chief Executive Officer Miyauchi Gen.
At the time of the declaration of management integration, Line and Yahoo Japan plan to create a growth engine by creating synergies in the areas of messenger, communication, search, commerce, fintech, advertising, and artificial intelligence (AI) businesses.
As the first achievement in management integration, Line and Softbank recently announced that they will introduce an online-only smartphone plan in March next year.
It provides 20GB of data for 2980 yen per month (about 30,000 won), and the data consumed when using the line service is supported for free. It also supports 5G communication. Softbank’s affordable phone’Y Mobile’ users can also use this plan. This is an online-only plan, and you can easily sign up from within the Line app.
Line said, “With the opportunity to integrate management with Z Holdings (Yahoo Japan’s parent company), SoftBank provides a new communication service using the LINE platform. This is an online-only brand, no need to visit stores, service All contract procedures are simple online. After the contract, customer support will also be conducted mainly on the online chat service, and various procedures will be made through the LINE app.”
LINE, Yahoo Japan app[사진=아주경제DB]