Line-Yahoo Japan JV christened A Holdings; Naver founder Lee picked as chair

A joint venture between Japan’s top messaging app provider Line Corp. and internet portal Yahoo Japan Corp. has been christened A Holdings and Lee Hae-jin, founder and global investment officer of South Korea’s No. 1 internet portal Naver Corp., has been named as the inaugural chair of the new entity.

According to information technology industry sources, Line and Yahoo Japan recently finalized the name of the joint venture and the formation of its board members.

A Holdings is equally owned by Naver, the parent of Line, and SoftBank Group, the holding firm of Z Holdings Corp. A Holdings will become the largest shareholder of Z Holdings, of which Line and Yahoo Japan are subsidiaries.

 

Lee Ha-jin will be the inaugural chairman of A Holdings, while at the same time its co-CEO, together with SoftBank Chief Executive Ken Miyauchi. Hwang In-joon, chief financial officer of Line, and Kazuhiko Fujihara, chief financial officer of SoftBank, will join A Holdings’ five-member board. SoftBank will name one remaining board director later. The board chairman has not yet been decided.

Shares of Naver were trading up 2.6% at 333,500 won in the early session Wednesday in Seoul.

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The merger of Japan’s most popular messaging app and one of the country’s top online retailers is the latest consolidation in Japan's tech industry, and comes as Yahoo struggles to compete with local rivals, including Rakuten Inc. and global behemoths such as Amazon.com Inc. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

Line is the most popular chat app in Japan, with 80 million users, far ahead of global platforms such as Instagram and Facebook in Japan. It is also the dominant messenger app in Taiwan and Thailand, where it has tens of millions of users, respectively.

The merger of Line and Yahoo Japan was supposed to be completed this year, but was postponed to March next year due to the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The merged entity's services will include chat, search, e-commerce and mobile payments. If completed, it could become Japan's biggest internet platform with over 100 million users, surpassing e-commerce giant Rakuten.

Write to Joo-Wan Kim at kjwan@hankyung.com