Tokyo, 25 July, /AJMEDIA/
Japanese convenience store operator Lawson Inc was delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Wednesday following a successful tender offer by KDDI Corp earlier this year, bringing down the curtain on its 24-year history as a listed company.
The tender offer completed in April followed an agreement between KDDI, a major telecommunications carrier, and Lawson’s parent company, Mitsubishi Corp, to take the retailer private.
KDDI and Mitsubishi have announced they will each hold a 50 percent stake in Lawson through this transaction, which is expected to be completed by September. The partnership aims to reach potential customers outside their respective business fields while expanding Lawson’s services using KDDI’s digital technologies.
KDDI, which previously held a 2.1 percent stake in Lawson, spent nearly 500 billion yen on the tender offer, aiming to strengthen its business outside the telecommunications industry by leveraging purchasing data on convenience store customers for its financial and other services.
Lawson has about 14,600 stores in Japan and 7,300 stores overseas, of which over 6,200 are in China.