The bidding war for Kakaku.com, the Japanese price-comparison operator, escalated Wednesday night when LY Corp and Bain Capital increased their offer to 3,384 yen per share, valuing the company at about 670 billion yen, or $4.12 billion. The new bid, up from the 3,232 yen the pair proposed in May, widens the gap with the rival offer from Sweden’s EQT, which stands at 3,000 yen per share. Kakaku.com said Thursday it will discuss the proposals with both bidders, withdrawing its earlier recommendation that shareholders accept EQT’s offer and adopting a neutral stance.
The revised terms are legally binding, LY and Bain said in the announcement, and the two companies are now the highest bidders in a contest that has drawn unusual attention in Japan’s deal-making community. The fight over Kakaku — a company best known for the Kakaku.com shopping site and the Tabelog restaurant-review service — has become a test of how far financial and strategic buyers will go for a dominant internet franchise in a country where such assets rarely change hands.
Kakaku’s response was carefully calibrated. The company said it will negotiate with EQT over its 3,000-yen offer, maintaining its view of the Swedish firm’s proposal, while also engaging with the new LY-Bain terms. The withdrawal of the earlier shareholder recommendation is significant: it removes the board’s endorsement of EQT and leaves the decision to shareholders, who will now weigh three numbers — EQT’s 3,000 yen, LY and Bain’s 3,384 yen, and whatever further bids emerge.
The price escalation reflects the value both sides see in Kakaku’s assets. The company’s price-comparison service is a fixture of Japanese e-commerce, and Tabelog dominates restaurant discovery in the country’s cities. For EQT, a European buyout firm expanding in Asia, Kakaku represents a rare large-scale Japanese platform play. For LY and Bain, the logic is strategic: LY Corp, the SoftBank-backed operator of the Line messaging app and Yahoo Japan, wants to integrate Kakaku’s comparison and review data into its own commerce and services ecosystem, and it has enlisted Bain to help finance the deal.
The bidding has also become a test of Japan’s evolving takeover rules. Japanese companies have historically been reluctant participants in hostile or contested acquisitions, and the government has been modernizing its guidelines to make deals more common. The Kakaku contest — with two credible bidders, public offers, and a board that has shifted its position — is being watched as a case study in how the new rules work in practice.
The financial stakes for LY are substantial. A deal at 3,384 yen per share would be one of the largest acquisitions in the company’s history, and LY would need to fund its share of the purchase alongside Bain. The company’s controlling shareholder, SoftBank, has been reshuffling its own portfolio — investing heavily in AI, raising debt against its OpenAI stake, and selling assets to fund its ambitions — and the Kakaku bid is consistent with that pattern of concentrating capital in a smaller number of bigger bets.
For shareholders, the revised offer changes the calculus. The 3,384-yen price represents a significant premium over where Kakaku’s shares traded before the contest began, and investors who bought on the expectation of a bidding war have been rewarded. Whether the price goes higher depends on EQT’s response. The Swedish firm has not commented publicly since the new bid, but people familiar with its thinking said it remains interested and is weighing whether the strategic premium LY is willing to pay can be matched on purely financial terms.
The outcome will also matter for Japan’s broader deal market. A victory for LY and Bain — a strategic buyer with private-equity backing beating a financial buyer — would signal that the country’s most attractive internet assets will command full strategic prices. A victory for EQT would show that disciplined financial buyers can still win contested auctions. Either way, the contest has demonstrated something the Japanese market has not always shown: when the right assets come up for sale, the competition is real.
The next move belongs to the bidders and the board. Kakaku said it will begin discussions with both sides, and the company’s shift to neutrality gives it room to negotiate terms — including price, deal certainty, and the treatment of its businesses — rather than simply collecting offers. For LY and Bain, the immediate question is whether 3,384 yen is enough. For EQT, it is whether to raise, walk away, or make a case that price is not the only thing that matters.
The mechanics of the contest favor patience. Under Japan’s takeover rules, a tender offer remains open for a minimum period once launched, and Kakaku’s shift to a neutral stance means neither bidder can count on board endorsement to carry the day. Shareholders, including the institutional investors who hold a large share of the company, will weigh the certainty of each offer against the possibility that the auction goes higher. EQT’s original bid was structured with the board’s support and the expectation of a quick closing; LY and Bain’s revised terms, offered in binding form, signal they are prepared to see the process through. For a company whose shares have traded for years without excitement, the sudden attention has been a transformation — and the bidders’ willingness to pay up reflects a conviction that Kakaku’s franchises, in the hands of the right owner, are worth considerably more than the market gave them credit for.
