Line Yahoo "Increasing Outside Director Ratio and Achieving Technological Independence" (Update)

Line Yahoo, which received administrative guidance from Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications to "reconsider the capital relationship with Korea's Naver," announced that it will pursue technological independence. Additionally, it plans to strengthen governance by increasing the proportion of outside directors.

Takeshi Idezawa, CEO of Line Yahoo, stated during the earnings announcement on the 8th, "We will sequentially terminate the consignment with Naver," expressing this intention.

Until now, Line Yahoo had entrusted Naver with infrastructure management such as data center usage, network management, and authentication through consignment contracts. They plan to gradually end this and manage these functions with their own technology.

Furthermore, they announced plans to increase outside directors to a majority and separate management from execution. To this end, they nominated Yuko Takahashi, an outside director of Microwave Chemical, as a new director candidate.

Shin Jung-ho, Line’s representative and Chief Product Officer (CPO), and Taya Taku, director and Chief Strategy Officer (CSO), whose terms are ending, are expected to retire. However, they will continue to fulfill the roles of CPO and CSO.

Previously, in November last year, Naver Cloud was infected with malware due to a cyberattack, resulting in a personal information leak at Line Yahoo, which shared some internal systems. Subsequently, the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications conducted administrative guidance twice, on March 5 and last month’s 16th.

In the two rounds of administrative guidance, the Japanese government demanded that Line Yahoo improve its management system, including "reconsidering the capital relationship with Naver." Naver and SoftBank each hold 50% of the shares of A Holdings, the major shareholder of Line Yahoo.