# LY Corporation

LY Corporation (LINEヤフー株式会社, Rain Yafū Kabushiki-gaisha, lit. 'Line Yahoo Corporation'), trading as LYC, is a Japanese internet company owned by A Holdings, a joint venture between SoftBank Group of Japan, and Naver Corporation of South Korea, founded in 2023 by the merger of Z Holdings, and four subsidiaries including Line Corporation and Yahoo! Japan.

## History

In March 2021, Z Holdings, which owns Yahoo! Japan, and Line Corporation merged their businesses. The companies aimed to reduce costs by unifying overlapping services such as QR code payment, and increase traffic between the approximately 200 services they offer, focusing on the three businesses of search, messaging apps, and advertising. They also announced plans to link the two companies' IDs within the group by the end of fiscal 2022.
However, it was revealed shortly after the merger that Line's personal information was accessible from China without adequate explanation to users. The actual work of ID linking was delayed as the group reviewed its data management system, and the outlook became uncertain.
In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022, ZHD's consolidated results showed that its main advertising business saw revenue decline by 1.2% from the previous year. Domestic e-commerce, which ZHD had been aiming to become the domestic leader in terms of sales, also saw growth slow to 0.9%. As a result, ZHD's results were sluggish, and ZHD President Kentaro Kawabe said, "ZHD's services are losing their competitive edge against rivals, and we have a strong sense of crisis."
In August 2022, ZHD announced plans to link the user IDs of Line, Yahoo! Japan, and PayPay in 2023 or later to strengthen mutual traffic.
In February 2023, ZHD announced plans to merge the three companies, ZHD, Yahoo! Japan, and Line Corporation, under its umbrella by the end of fiscal 2023. Even after the business integration, ZHD and Line Corporation continued to exist as separate companies and services, but ZHD President Kentaro Kawabe said, "It worked for the transitional period, but in order to promote further integration, we will unify and accelerate decision-making." On April 28, it was announced that the new company would be named Line Yahoo (LY Corporation in English). The CEO of the new company will be Takeshi Idezawa, the CEO of ZHD, who said, "The business environment is still challenging, but we will fundamentally streamline our business through the merger."
In July 2023, ZHD announced that it would merge the domestic financial businesses of Line Corporation and ZHD. The two businesses, Line Securities and Line Credit, which handles personal loans, were consolidated into Z Financial, a financial intermediate holding company in the group that owns PayPay Bank and PayPay Securities.
In March 2023, Yahoo!, Line, and PayPay launched a joint mileage service called LYP Mileage. When you purchase items at participating stores and earn miles, you will receive PayPay points at a certain redemption rate. Yahoo! President Takashi Ozawa said, "This is a long-cherished plan that has finally come to fruition."
On October 1, 2023, ZHD, its subsidiaries Line Corporation, Yahoo! Japan, Z Entertainment, and Z Data merged to form LY Corporation.

## Security

520,000 records of personal data of LINE users were leaked in October of 2023. Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications issued administrative guidance to LY Corporation twice on April 16, 2024. LY Corporation is required to submit another report by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications before July 1, 2024. In March 2024, the Japanese government ordered Line and Naver to separate their systems because of the data leak.