Bain to Acquire 50 Percent of Leading Japanese TV Shopping Company

Private equity firm Bain Capital announced on June 22 that it has entered into an agreement under which Bain will acquire a 50 percent stake in Jupiter Shop Channel, Japan’s leading television shopping company, from Sumitomo Corporation.

Jupiter Shop Channel was established in 1996 as the first channel in Japan devoted to television shopping, and offers live broadcasting 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The Shop Channel currently has the highest market share among television shopping channels in Japan, and currently has an audience of some 27 million households across Japan, with some 50 percent of all households wired to view it.

“We are very pleased to take part in another exciting transaction representing Bain Capital in Japan,” said Tsuyoshi Imai, a Ropes & Gray private equity partner. “This deal demonstrates both the commitment of financial investors to Japan, as well as the opportunities for private equity firms to work with Japanese strategic companies.”

Ropes & Gray is representing Bain Capital in the matter, with a team led by partner Tsuyoshi Imai in Tokyo. Other Ropes & Gray attorneys working on the transaction include Kaori Fukazawa, Masa Yamamoto and Deidre Johnson. Lawyers from Mori Hamada & Matsumoto advised Bain on Japanese law.

The acquisition is the latest in a string of transactions that Ropes & Gray has handled for Bain over the past year. In November, Ropes & Gray represented Bain Capital in its approximately $3.2 billion acquisition of the Skylark chain, which operates over 3,600 restaurants across Japan. The deal was the largest private equity firm buyout in Japan since the beginning of the global financial crisis in 2008, and was recently was named Japan’s ‘debt deal of the year’ by Asian Legal Business. In August, the firm acted as outside counsel to Bain in the private equity shop's $1.3 billion deal to purchase a majority stake in MYOB, Australia's leading developer of business software.