Rakuten, Inc. (hereafter “the Company”) announces that with an effective date of March 30, 2018 (expected), the company has decided that part of the "Rakuten B2B" business conducted by the company (exhibition contracts with suppliers) will be succeeded to SynaBiz Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Aucfan Co., Ltd., by way of a company split (hereinafter referred to as the "Company Split"), as described below.
Since this absorption split corresponds to simplified absorption split to which the provision of Article 784, Paragraph 2 of the Companies Act applies, the disclosure of certain items and details has been omitted from this announcement.
１．Purpose of the company split
"Rakuten B2B" is a BtoB procurement service (hereinafter referred to as "this Business") for Rakuten Ichiba merchants, operated by Rakuten from 2011. It has been used by many companies as a platform to mediate between suppliers who want to sell or wholesale goods to “buyers”, who are preliminary from Rakuten Ichiba merchants. However, based on the change in the demand of the Rakuten Ichiba merchants, we decided to close this business on March 29, 2018 (expected).
With the closing of this business, the exhibition contracts with the supplier companies will be transferred to SynaBiz Co., Ltd. However, preliminary “buyers” who are Rakuten Ichiba merchants, employees of the company engaged in this business, and all assets and liabilities related to this business, are not included in this contract.