South Korea’s online giant Naver Corp. has acquired Japan’s e-book platform company eBOOK Initiative Japan Co. (EBIJ) in hopes to recover command over digital comics market in Japan it had lost to latecomer and Korean archrival Kakao Corp. by leveraging on its partnership with SoftBank Group. According to IT industry sources on Tuesday, Naver’s third-tier subsidiary LINE Digital Frontier recently finalized its tender offer to buy EBIJ shares listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The transaction is estimated to have cost more than 200 billion won ($164 million) given EBIJ’s market cap of 27.1 billion yen ($219 million) before its delisting in February.

Through the transaction to be completed by the end of this month, EBIJ will become a 100 percent owned subsidiary of LINE Digital Frontier, which operates Japan-based webtoon service LINE Manga whose market leadership was recently overtaken by rival’s webtoon platform, Piccoma under Korean company Kakao. LINE Digital Frontier is controlled by Naver’s subsidiary Webtoon Entertainment and Naver Webtoon.

EBIJ founded in 2000 has been a subsidiary of SoftBank Group and the transaction is expected to create synergy with LINE Manga given its considerable influence and know-how in content development and services to lure local customers and its connection with Yahoo Japan. Naver’s acquisition of EBIJ is also geared toward its partnership with SoftBank as Naver’s subsidiary LINE Corp. and Softbank’s Z Holdings Corp., formerly Yahoo Japan, finalized their merger deal.

Japan’s e-manga market is valued at 411.4 billion yen, and it is growing at an annual rate of over 20 percent, according to data.


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