Rakuten shares climb 2% on bank unit listing progress
TOKYO (Reuters) -Shares in Japan's Rakuten Group Inc climbed 2% on Tuesday, a day after the e-commerce firm said it had applied to list its online banking unit on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
Rakuten announced plans for an initial public listing last September as it grappled with the cost of building a mobile network and competed with Amazon.com Inc. Its shares last month hit their lowest level in more than a decade.
Rakuten, which has a market capitalization of $7.2 billion after a 46% slide in its shares so far this year, offered no guidance on the listing date.
The group is also planning to list its securities business but faces volatile markets. The shares of peer Monex Group Inc are down more than a third this year.
The benchmark Nikkei 225 index was up 1% in morning trading.
($1 = 136.3300 yen)
(Reporting by Sam Nussey; Editing by Tom Hogue and Bradley Perrett)
