Shareholders in mobile phone service provider eAcess Ltd. approved their company's acquisition by its larger rival, Softbank Corp., at their extraordinary meeting Friday, eAcess said.
The approval will pave the way for Softbank to turn eAccess into a wholly owned subsidiary through an equity swap on Jan. 1 after eAccess is delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
Softbank announced the acquisition in October in a bid to take advantage of eAccess-owned frequency bands for improving mobile phone services.
As the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has viewed the acquisition as running counter to its policy of allocating frequency bands fairly to mobile phone firms, however, Softbank now plans to reduce its stake in eAccess to less than one third later.