Reeling from a downturn in the fortunes of one of its recent US acquisitions and a steep decline in its stock price, Japan's Softbank Corp. said today it would merge several of its US companies into a single media giant controlling magazine publishing, Web sites, computer trade shows, and training and television.
The merged company will be named Ziff-Davis Inc., after its magazine publishing arm, and include Softbank Forums, the world's largest trade-show organizer. Softbank owns Comdex, the sprawling trade show that begins next week in Las Vegas.
In Tokyo trading Monday, Softbank stock sank to a record low of US$23.63, down sharply from the year's high of $68.15 in January.
The reorganization follows a spending spree by Softbank in recent years that saw it spend more than $4.5 billion investing in more than 30 computer companies, mostly in the United States.
A decline in the price of computer memory chips at one of those companies - Kingston Technology, the world's leading supplier of add-on memory for personal computers - had cut into revenue forecasts for Softbank as a whole.
