News ReleaseLawson to Establish Preparatory Company to Explore Entry into Banking Business
TOKYO, JAPAN, 10 24, 2016
At its Board meeting on October 24, 2016, Lawson, Inc. decided to set up a preparatory company to explore potential opportunities in the banking business. The preparatory company will be tasked initially with exploring the possibility of establishing a bank based on Lawson’s previous experience in financial service provision, and seeking the necessary permits and approvals from the relevant authorities.
1．Background and Motivation
As part of its corporate philosophy “Creating Happiness and Harmony in Our Communities,” Lawson is working to strengthen its support for customers’ daily lives, resolving local issues and making community living more convenient by offering an extensive range of daily necessities, handling concert tickets and making home deliveries.
As part of that effort, Lawson already offers a range of financial services, acting as an agency for utility bill payment services and installing joint ATM machines in its stores. As a natural extension of these activities, Lawson has decided to set up a preparatory company to explore the possibility of directly offering its own financial services by entering the banking business.
Lawson operated 12,648 stores across Japan at the end of September 2016. We are looking to ultimately boost customer convenience by exploring new services and the potential synergies to be derived from combining convenience store and banking services.
The new bank would leverage Lawson’s existing convenience store operation and community infrastructure to develop useful financial services such as bank account settlements that further enhance the convenience of its customers’ daily lives.
The preparatory company will carefully consider the most appropriate structure for a new bank, the type of concrete services the bank would offer, and the schedule for establishing the bank. We will disclose more details as soon as they are confirmed.
2．Overview of Preparatory Company
| (1) Company name | Lawson Bank Preparatory Company, Inc. |
| (2) Business location | Osaki 1-11-2, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo |
| (3) Company representative | Chairman, Representative Director |
| Tadashi Iwashita | |
| (4) Capital | 500 million yen |
| (5) Shareholders | Lawson, Inc.: 95% |
| The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Ltd.: 5% | |
| (6) To be established | Late November 2016 (tentative) |
3．Impact on Lawson, Inc. Business Results
We expect any impact from this decision on Lawson’s consolidated business results for the year to February 2017 and the year to February 2018 will be minimal.
