Asia's largest digital platform with 130 million users created by merging Naver Line and Yahoo Japan

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Hanoi, (VNA) – The first thing that comes to mind when you see Pangyo is IT. In Pangyo, various IT companies like Naver, Kakao, NCSOFT, Nexon, and Neowiz Games are located. Naver is the third-largest company in market capitalization and is also an IT company that represents Pangyo. Recently, the Japan Fair Trade Commission approved the management integration of Naver's subsidiary Line and Z Holdings Corp, a subsidiary of Softbank and a Yahoo Japan operator. The name of the joint venture between Naver and Softbank is A Holdings. The general shareholders meeting related to approval of the division of the line for the merger between the two companies will be held in February of next year, and will be officially launched in March.

The integration of Line and Yahoo Japan is the combination of Japan's largest messenger company and search portal. Line, which has about 82 million users, is known as the national messenger in Japan. Yahoo Japan is Japan's second-largest search engine service provider with about 50 million users. When the two companies are integrated, the largest digital platform in Asia used by 130 million people will be created.

Instead of the painful competition in the new business area, it will maximize the synergy effect through sharing based on portal and messenger services. In particular, cooperation will be made in the AI field, which both Naver and Softbank are fostering as a new growth engine. There is expected to be joint R&D (R&D) and collaboration to implement AI technology as a real service. In addition, the two companies are expected to cooperate in a variety of key business areas such as pay, finance, and search.

Lee Hae-jin, Naver's Global Investment Officer (GIO), will be the CEO and chairman of A Holdings, which Naver and Softbank each have a 50% stake. Lee, who is also the founder of Naver, is one of the main characters who transformed Line that was merely a new company after the 2011 earthquake in Japan into the largest messenger in Japan. A Holdings will have five directors, of which four have been nominated and one is to be announced. The nominees are GIO Lee Hae-jin from Naver, CFO Hwang In-joon from Line, and CEO Ken Miyauchi and CFO Kazuhiko Fujihara from Softbank.  GIO Lee is the CEO and chairman and CEO Miyauchi of Softbank is the CEO and president.

NAVER, the company that represents Pangyo, is a Korean company that was divided from its parent company, NHN. It is operating the portal site Naver, and it ranks 34th in the business world as of June 2020. Naver played a part in raising the reputation of Pangyo Techno Valley as Korea's Silicon Valley by completing the construction and moving into the Green Factory in Jeongja-dong, Bundang-gu, the headquarters building in 2010. Naver has opened some of its office building space to the general public. You can browse books in the Naver's library and buy green window-shaped magnets at the Naver Store. All of the income from sales is donated through Happy Bean./.