Sep. 4, 2003 - TOKYO-- Rakuten Inc., operator of Japan's largest Internet shopping mall "Rakuten Ichiba," said Thursday it will acquire Hitachi Zosen Corp.'s online hotel-booking operations for 32.3 billion yen later this month.

Mytrip Net Co., a profit-making unit of the struggling heavy machinery and engineering company, will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Rakuten on Sept. 17.

Mytrip Net runs "Tabi-no Madoguchi," the nation's largest hotel-reservation Web site with a membership of 2.83 million people.

The Tokyo-based company, having just 52 employees, posted a net profit of 555 million yen on sales of 3.1 billion yen for the year ended March 31.

"It (the acquisition) will put us at the top of the industry in the field of Net travel, in addition to our top positions in Net shopping and golf course reservations," Rakuten President Hiroshi Mikitani said at a news conference.

The 32.3 billion yen is one of the largest sums paid for the acquisition of an Internet business in Japan. Analysts said Rakuten's acquisition of Mytrip Net will allow the company to better compete with Yahoo Japan Corp., operator of Japan's biggest portal.

Meanwhile, Hitachi Zosen said it has revised upward its estimated group net profit for the current year through next March 31 to 13 billion yen from the previously forecast 6.5 billion yen due to the sale of Mytrip Net.

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