eAccess Courting Goldman Sachs
ADSL Broadband firm and mobile carrier wannabe eAccess is in discussion with American’s Goldman Sachs Group regarding significant investment in the firm. eAccess issued a Japanese press release in response to an article in the Nihon Keizai Daily. The article reported that the company plans to partner with Goldman Sachs with an investment by the American corporate giant of 25 billion yen through GS Capital Partners. Goldman Sachs has ties with Universal Studios Japan and could smooth plans for eAccess to distribute Universal video games over Japanese 3G cell phones. The article went on to say that they may also develop phone-based travel content including golf and hotel reservations for properties with Goldman Sachs ties.
The press release admitted the company was in talks with Goldman Sachs but denied that final decisions had been made regarding the size of the investment. Nevertheless the companies appear close to reaching consensus on some form of cooperation and investment.
eAccess joined Softbank in applying for a license over the 1.7GHz band and the company hopes to start service in 2007. Rolling out their proposed eMobile network will be a very expensive business and eAccess has been aggressively scouting investment partners from a variety of industries. TV broadcaster TBS has agreed to come on board [.PDF in English] with an initial investment of 10 billion yen.