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Technology Stocks : Korea Thrunet Co Ltd - (KOREA) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JEFFLUST@AOL.COM who wrote (236)	1/19/2000 10:03:00 AM
From: R. Bond	Respond to of 406

FYI: The Financial Times January 17, 2000 Companies News / IT SOFTBANK: Internet company raises stake in South Korea By John Burton in Seoul Softbank, Japan's leading internet investment company, is increasing control over its South Korean operations despite a backlash against its growing influence in Asia's biggest internet market after Japan. Softbank said it would raise its stake in Softbank Korea, its local investment unit, to 80 per cent from 46 per cent by buying shares from South Korea's Naray Mobile Telecom and Posdata for $110m. As a result of the acquisition, Softbank also raised its stake to 30 per cent in Yahoo! Korea, the nation's leading internet portal with a 30 per cent market share. The move comes shortly after five leading Korean internet and technology companies said they were considering starting a $130m venture fund to stop promising internet companies falling under Softbank's control. Masayoshi Son, Softbank's founder, has said Softbank plans to invest $100m in Korean internet start-ups. One of the first projects was an online stock broker, set up last week in conjunction with LG Investment and Securities, the nation's biggest securities house. Softbank has a 40 per cent stake and LG 15 per cent. Although Mr Son is a Korean-Japanese, his plans have provoked nationalist anger because of Japan's harsh colonial rule of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945. Daum Communications, a leading Korean-owned internet portal, has run newspaper advertisements saying it is ready to repel Softbank just as Koreans defeated Japanese invaders in the late 16th century. Korea's big conglomerates, or chaebol, also aim to protect the domestic internet market against Softbank and are discussing joint investments in online businesses. Samsung, Korea's biggest electronics group, last week said it was becoming the second largest shareholder in Serome Technology, which recently launched Dialpad, a free internet-based telephone service, in Korea with an estimated $90m investment. Serome plans to expand its Dialpad service to 10 foreign countries in an effort to copy the global expansion of Yahoo!, in which Softbank is a main investor. The expansion of online services in Korea comes as the number of local internet subscribers is expected to double to 18m this year, out of Korea's population of 45m, with revenues expected to climb to Won900bn ($786m) from Won410m last year. But the Samsung Economic Research Institute recently warned that Korean internet services still lack the management expertise of foreign rivals and have few core technologies to compete in the global market.