South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission has begun formal deliberation on the business combination of Naver Financial and Dunamu, after its secretariat received the companies’ proposed corrective measures and submitted an examination report finding competition restrictions. The examiner had already notified the companies of a provisional finding that competition could be substantially restricted, and the commission’s plenary session will now decide whether the corrective measures are enough, with approval, tougher remedies and outright disapproval all open; the commission aims to conclude within the year.
The combination, reported to the commission last November, is a comprehensive share exchange under which Naver Financial, the country’s largest online simple payment operator, acquires all of Dunamu for about 2.54 of its shares per Dunamu share, making the operator of Upbit, the largest Korean virtual asset exchange, a wholly owned subsidiary. The examiner assessed 10 relevant markets and 12 combinations, finding restrictions in the six mixed combinations linking the exchange business to payments, search, advertising, shopping, financial data and unlisted stock trading, and in all four combinations touching Korean won stablecoin issuance, a market the two companies plan to enter but which has not yet formed.