Rakuten to Acquire Viber Media Ltd

Feb 16, 2014 (Sun): Japanese Internet giant Rakuten has made an announcement that the company’s board of directors has decided to acquire Viber Media Ltd (“Viber”) at US$900 million and will hold 100% of Viber’s outstanding voting stock and underwrite a new issue of shares.

Viber is a messaging and VoIP service operator and has approximately 280 million global registered users, and monthly active users over 100 million. Viber apps on smartphones allow users to have conversations, and through its high quality functions users can send and receive messages and images, thus Viber offers a hybrid range of services rarely found on competing platforms. Viber is rapidly growing numbers of users, especially in emerging countries.