Mr. Takafumi Horie, president of the high-flying Internet services company Livedoor Co., has once again been thrown into the media spotlight as a criminal investigation into his business activities begins.
Beginning as a small Web-site production firm Mr. Horie created in 1996 while a student at the University of Tokyo, Livedoor Co. has grown into a company whose consolidated annual sales are 78.4 billion yen and current-account profits total 11.2 billion yen. The key to its growth was mergers and acquisitions carried out using a variety of tactics in the capital market. Now these business methods have become a target of investigation.
Investigators from the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's Office raided Livedoor's offices and Mr. Horie's residence on Jan. 16 to determine whether a Livedoor subsidiary had misled the market during a takeover by disseminating false information. The subsidiary under suspicion is Livedoor Marketing Co., formerly Value Click Japan Inc., in which Livedoor holds about a 75 percent stake.