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NHN to Acquire Japanese Portal Site [news.mk.co.kr]
NHN Corp., South Korea’s biggest web search engine, is participating in a bid to takeover of LDH Corporation’s Livedoor Co., one of Japanese portal search engine, Bloomberg said Thursday.
Livedoor Co. operates a website with 30 million members, employs 360 people. It recorded 7.4 billion yen ($ 81.9 million) in revenue last year. Livedoor’s blog service is regarded as one of its major businesses.
LDH, about 27 percent of stake owned by Morgan Stanley, began the first round of bids last January including NHN planning to finish the deal for selling the Livedoor Co. by April 1.
South Korea's NHN to buy Japan's Livedoor: Nikkei [reuters.com]
LDH launched the final round of bidding for Livedoor Co last month and has decided to sell the business to NHN, for about 7 billion yen ($74 million) after an investment fund dropped out, the Nikkei newspaper reported.
Livedoor sold to S Korean internet portal [ft.com]
One of the most gripping rags-to-riches-to-rags story in modern Japanese history came to an end on Monday when the internet portal Livedoor was bought by a South Korean rival.
The last piece of Livedoor – the portal which at one point had a market capitalisation of more than $7bn before scandal deposed its charismatic founder Takafumi Horie – was sold to South Korea’s top internet portal, NHN Corp, for only Y6.3bn ($67m).
NHN hopes the deal will help it expand its online gaming service and its Naver search engine in Japan. It plans to create more Japanese content using Livedoor’s blog service.
