News & Events

The Firm is representing Ant Financial Services Group (“Ant Financial”) in connection with its proposed investment of US$200 million in Kakao Pay Corp. (“Kakao Pay”), a mobile finance subsidiary to be launched by Kakao Corp. (“Kakao”). Kakao is South Korea’s leading mobile platform company best known for its messaging platform Kakao Talk and with other mobile services spanning mail, search, news, advertising, gaming, e-commerce, music, maps and more.

Ant Financial’s investment is part of a larger strategic partnership, as Ant Financial currently has over 450 million users worldwide, and will bring new digital financial innovations to South Korea through Kakao Pay. The new company will increase the number of online and offline merchants by merging Alipay’s 34,000 merchants in South Korea into Kakao Pay’s system, providing merchants with a much larger customer base. The strategic partnership also aims to bring comprehensive digital financial services to Kakao’s 48 million plus users.

The Simpson Thacher team working on the transaction includes Jin H. Park, Ian C. Ho and Yuri Bak (M&A).