30th Mar 2006 07:00
Softbank Corp30 March 2006 SOFTBANK announces the sale of shares held in Yahoo! Japan March 22, 2006 SOFTBANK CORP. (hereinafter "the Company") announced that its wholly-ownedsubsidiary BB Technology Corp. (Head office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative:Masayoshi Son) has today sold a portion of its shareholdings in Yahoo JapanCorporation (Head office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative: Masahiro Inoue;hereinafter "Yahoo! Japan"). 1. Outline of the sale (1) Shares sold: 173,000 common shares held in Yahoo! Japan (2) Proceeds of the sale: approx. 23.3 billion yen (3) Percentage of shares sold: 0.57 % (percentage of SOFTBANK Group's shareholdings against the number of totaloutstanding shares of Yahoo! Japan) 2. Purpose of the sale (1) To help Yahoo! Japan keep its stock listing on Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE)1st section The Company and Yahoo! Japan have been guided by TSE to take appropriatemeasures to enable the "special few*'s shareholdings in Yahoo! Japan to meetTSE's criterion for delisting that limits the percentage of shares held by the"special few" in a certain stock to 75% or less. The Company and Yahoo! Japanjudge that this transaction would provide a solution to meet this criterion andthus enable Yahoo! Japan to remain listed on TSE. The sale reduced the percentage of shareholdings of the Group and Yahoo! Inc.(Head office: California, the United States; Representative: Terry Semel) inYahoo! Japan, to 22,581,712 shares or 74.7% of its total outstanding shares.The Company does not have any plan to sell its shareholdings that further reduceits shareholding ratio in Yahoo! Japan. (2) To finance part of the planned acquisition of Vodafone K.K. (Head office:Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative: William T. Morrow) 3. Change in the Group's shareholdings in Yahoo! Japan following the sale Shareholding ratio Number of shares held Number of total outstanding shares Before the sale 41.9% 12,647,008 shares 30,216,873 sharesAfter the sale 41.3% 12,474,008 shares 30,216,873 shares (Note 1) The number of total outstanding shares of Yahoo! Japan corresponds tothe figure as of the end of December 2005, which was listed in Yahoo! Japan's"Results for the Three Months ended December 31, 2005", announced on January 23,2006. (Note 2) The number of shares held by the Group in Yahoo! Japan includes theshares indirectly held by the Group companies. (Note 3) Yahoo! Japan will remain a consolidated subsidiary of the Company afterthe sale. 4. Impacts on consolidated financial results The Company expects the sale of shares will record approx. 22.5 billion yen ingain on sale of investment securities as special income, in the fourth quarterfor the fiscal year ending March 31 2006. *"Special few" includes the 10 largest shareholders, persons having specialinterests in the issuer, and the issuer itself if it holds its own shares This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock ExchangeRelated Shares:
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