[News Focus] Four-way race for E-bay Korea acquisition

The race to acquire a controlling stake in eBay Korea is shaping up to be a four-way battle, with big-name players in retail all in for a deal valued at 5 trillion won ($4.42 billion).

According to industry sources, Lotte Group, Emart Inc., SK Telecom Co. and private equity firm MBK Partners have been chosen as the preliminary bidders to buy the South Korean unit of the e-commerce giant, which operates some of the country’s major online shopping platforms including Gmarket, Auction and G9.

Lotte and Emart are leading brands in department store and supermarket segments, while the country’s number one mobile carrier SKT runs its own online market place 11st. MBK is the largest shareholder of Homeplus supermarket chain.

Kakao, the operator of messenger app KakaoTalk which had been considered as a potential buyer, decided to opt out of the bidding.

The sale comes at a time when the local e-commerce scene has been thrust into spotlight with the US stock market debut of Coupang.

Last week, Coupang was listed on the New York Stock Exchange at $35 per share, raising $4.6 billion in what has been described as the “biggest IPO debut” for any foreign company since Alibaba.

At home, it is the second-largest e-commerce platform, trailing only Naver, the country’s biggest web portal, search engine and platform operator that also runs its own open market service.

Following the news, Sophie Kim, CEO of online grocery service Market Kurly, said that plans to go public before the end of the year were being discussed within the company during an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

Days after Coupang’s successful IPO debut, South Korean retail giant Shinsegae Group and Naver also announced a stock swap deal worth 250 billion won and a strategic partnership agreement on Tuesday.

The agreement will see Naver purchase 150 billion won worth of stocks in Shinsegae‘s discount store chain operator E-mart to own 2.96 percent and buy 100 billion won worth of fashion retailer Shinsegae International to own 6.85 percent, according to a company regulatory filing.

E-mart and Shinsegae will purchase 250 billion won of Naver shares to own a combined 0.4 percent.

In a statement, Shinsegae Group said the two firms plan to establish a “strong cooperation network” encompassing the entire retail industry, from “commerce, logistics and new businesses.”

The cooperation has been seen as the latest in a series of major moves in the industry in recent years.

“Shinsegae Group and Naver’s stock swap is similar to the moves by major e-commerce platforms such as the collaboration between 11Street and Amazon, the merger between GS Home Shopping and GS Retail, the sale of eBay Korea, the listing of Coupang,” Ha Nu-ri, an analyst at Meritz Securities, said in a report.

Shinsegae International will be the “biggest beneficiary” of the deal as it will secure a content creator as a business partner, allowing them to expand shopping channels and its reach to customers, the analyst said.

According to recent data from Euromonitor International, South Korea was the fourth largest e-commerce market in the world following China, the US and the UK, boasting the highest e-commerce share of all retail sales which stood at 35.8 percent in 2020.

By Yim Hyun-su (hyunsu@heraldcorp.com)