(Bloomberg) — Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. said it has secured enough bids to buy NTT Data Group Corp., with the deal worth ¥2.37 trillion ($16.3 billion) expected to boost its AI ambitions and simplify the corporate structure.
The Japanese company will start the settlement on June 26, it said in a statement Friday. NTT, which owns about 58% of NTT Data, had last month offered ¥4,000 for every share it doesn’t already own in the company with plans to take it private.
The takeover of NTT Data, one of the world’s largest data center operators, would put artificial intelligence at the heart of NTT group, expanding the global reach of its various units. About one-third owned by the government, NTT competes with KDDI Corp. and SoftBank Corp. in the growing AI race, at a time Tokyo is pushing companies to develop a homegrown AI platform to vie with the likes of OpenAI and China’s DeepSeek.
The move also comes as Japanese conglomerates are under pressure from regulators to streamline their corporate structures. In February, the Tokyo Stock Exchange cautioned companies with parent-affiliate listings to better protect minority shareholders’ interests, stepping up its long-burning campaign to reduce such arrangements.
Since then, NEC Corp. has acquired unit NEC Networks & System Integration Corp., while Bloomberg News reported Toyota Motor Corp. Chairman Akio Toyoda’s plan to buy Toyota Industries Corp. The moves have fueled speculation that more firms may follow suit. NTT previously acquired its cash-generating wireless carrier NTT Docomo Inc. in 2020.
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