Japanese mobile operator eAccess will become an indirect unit of Softbank after the latter agreed to sell the company to Yahoo Japan, another one of its affiliates.
Softbank owns 99.6% of eAccess, but only 33.3% in terms of voting shares, while it holds…
Japanese mobile operator eAccess will become an indirect unit of Softbank after the latter agreed to sell the company to Yahoo Japan, another one of its affiliates.
Softbank owns 99.6% of eAccess, but only 33.3% in terms of voting shares, while it holds 42.2% of Yahoo Japan.
The search engine company will spend Y324bn (US$3.17bn) for Softbank’s stake, in a deal aimed at “stimulating further rapid growth in internet services for smartphones and tablets in particular”, it said in a statement. To that effect, Yahoo Japan will start a new service called ‘Y!mobile’ that shares phone networks with Softbank.
The deal will only go ahead after eAccess absorbs local wireless player Willcom, a 100%-owned Softbank unit. The combination is scheduled to close in June.
Softbank expects to record around Y55.7bn (US$544.7m) in gain on the sale of its eAccess shares for the fiscal year ending 31 March 2015. But it said the impact of the transaction on its consolidated results will be “minor”.
Yahoo Japan mandated Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley as its financial adviser and Nishimura & Asachi as its legal adviser.
A year ago, Softbank sold about 67% of its voting shares in eAccess to 11 buyers, including Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Samsung and NSN. The deal was aimed at complying with local regulations on spectrum allocation. Under current rules, both a parent company and one of its units in which it owns no more than 33.3% can apply for spectrum.
Softbank, including its eAccess and Willcom units, is the second-largest mobile operator in Japan, behind NTT Docomo but ahead of KDDI.
Separately, Softbank recently hired a regulatory heavy-weight, Bruce Gottlied, to convince US regulators of the benefits of a merger between mobile operators Sprint and T-Mobile US.
The Japanese company, which completed its acquisition of Sprint for US$21.6bn last summer, is on a mission to consolidate the US wireless market.
