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18 November 2019SoftBank Corp - Japanese telecommunications holding company - announced that it has reached an agreement for the merger of Z Holdings (subsidiary and owner of Yahoo Japan) and the South Korean messaging company Line Corp.A move that should allow the creation of a group of sufficient size to continue to prosper in a very competitive market, dominated by the United States and China.
The agreement, which should give rise to a 30 billion dollar company, has yet to be confirmed by the final closing in December and completed in October 2020. "SoftBank aims to become a leading company with a leading role in Japan , in Asia and in the world. The integration involves the commercial cooperation of the new company in various sectors, including artificial intelligence, Internet research, telecommunications ", says a note.
Line is one of the most popular messaging apps in Japan, Taiwan and Thailand, but struggles to compete in other markets, despite offering a wide range of services such as digital payments, taxis and music, for example of what the Chinese app WeChat does.
Yahoo Japan is one of Japan's largest search engines, but it has to contend with Google's competition, while its other commercial activities, such as e-commerce, are rivaled as the Japanese online trading platform Rakuten and the Chinese giant Alibaba.