Yahoo Japan Officially Confirms Purchase Of eAccess For $3.2 Billion

Yahoo Japan has plans of acquiring eAccess from its current owner, SoftBank in a bid worth $3.2 billion to boost its online advertising and digital content business

Yahoo Japan, nation's largest Internet portal, announced plans to acquire eAccess, a wireless network provider, from the telecommunications giant SoftBank for 324 billion yen ($3.2 billion) in order to boost its presence in the online advertising, ecommerce and digital content business. With this acquisition, Yahoo will also take control of eAccess-owned Japanese carrier, E-Mobile. The Internet search giant will rename E-Mobile as Y!mobile and take advantage of the its devices, plans and sales channels.

Yahoo Japan is expected to complete the deal by June 1, followed by eAccess' planned merger with Willcom, another SoftBank-owned wireless provider, which will also fall under Yahoo Japan's portfolio. Both carriers have about 10 million users combined, and Yahoo Japan aims to acquire more than 20 million users for Y!mobile alone.

"We want 10 million (additional users), and we won't reach that unless we have control over our own handsets, service plans and sales channels, so we're launching this as a standard mobile operator," Yahoo Japan President and CEO, Manabu Miyasaka said at a news conference, according to a report by Reuters.

Yahoo Japan will use eAccess' 3,000 retail shops as a platform to cross-sell Yahoo Premium services. These shops will also be branded as Y!shops and will sell mobile devices with an option to pre-load Yahoo's mobile apps on their devices.

Although, Yahoo Japan will purchase 99.7 percent of eAccess stock, it only equals to about 33.3 percent of voting rights, the company said in a press release (translated), Thursday. This means Yahoo Japan will have no veto rights over the company's major decisions, but will own effective operating controls since SoftBank sold 66.7 percent voting rights to 11 different companies, including a Samsung's subsidiary. Reuters also notes that Softbank owns a stake of around 42.5 percent in Yahoo Japan.