YAHOO JAPAN PAYS $3.7BN FOR CONTROL IN ZOZO

YAHOO Japan Corporation has agreed to pay as much as $3.7 billion (R54.22bn) to take control of flamboyant entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa’s Zozo, stepping up competition against Amazon.com and Rakuten in one of Asia’s largest online retail arenas. Maezawa, the outspoken billionaire who’s set to become the first paying passenger aboard Elon Musk’s SpaceX ride around the moon, will sell some of his own shares in the online fashion mall and stepped down as chief executive officer yesterday to make way for director Kotaro Sawada. The surprise deal could shake up the domestic e-commerce landscape while bolstering the prospects of Yahoo Japan, whose biggest shareholder is the local telecommunications arm of Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Group. Zozo, which had a market value of 675 billion yen (R92bn) before the announcement, has already carved out a niche in fashion against aggressive rivals like Amazon. Yahoo Japan’s shares rose as much as 5.7 percent in Tokyo, their biggest intra-day jump since May 9, while Zozo surged 19 percent. Among the country’s online retailers, Rakuten fell as much as 3.2 percent while Mercari slipped 2 percent. Investors feared the deal will intensify competition, said Masayuki Otani, chief market strategist at Securities Japan in Tokyo. “It’s a plus for Yahoo Japan and would help expand their e-commerce operations,” said Mitsushige Akino, an executive officer with Ichiyoshi Asset Management in Tokyo. I Bloomberg