NCSOFT CEO repurchases shares from Nexon

By Yoon Sung-won

Kim Taek-jin, NCSOFT CEO

Kim Jung-ju, Nexon founder

NCSOFT Chief Executive Kim Taek-jin has bought back the company’s shares he sold to Nexon, the company said Friday.

The move came as Nexon, the nation’s largest online game company, sold all the NCSOFT stock it had in a block deal on the Japan bourse for 63.4 billion yen (605.1 billion won) a day ago. The per-share price was 183,000 won.

According to NCSOFT, Kim acquired 440,000 shares, which is 13.31 percent of some 3.3 million shares Nexon sold in this deal. As a result, Kim’s share of his own company became 11.98 percent, up from 10 percent.

Consequently, this has put an end to the uncomfortable three-year alliance between the leading game companies in Korea.

Nexon was the largest shareholder of NCSOFT with 15.08 percent since the former purchased the latter’s 14.68 percent of shares in 2012. The two had built an alliance jointly to acquire EA, one of the world’s largest U.S. game companies.

However, the move ended in failure and Nexon acquired an additional 0.4 percent of NCSOFT shares in October last year to give it more than 15 percent.

In January, Nexon also announced that it would influence NCSOFT’s business management as the largest shareholder, causing disharmony over the managerial rights of the latter.

A month later, NCSOFT established another alliance with Netmarble Games, the nation’s top mobile game firm, through a swap deal.

This was interpreted as a move to defend the managerial rights from Nexon as the sum of Kim Taek-jin’s NCSOFT shares and those owned by Netmarble reached 20 percent.

Expectations had been that Nexon might dispose of NCSOFT shares because the former was not likely to benefit without participating in the latter’s business.