*This is a machine-translated text of the original article.

Benesse Holdings Inc announced that it would transfer all of its shares in consolidated subsidiary Simul International Inc to TAKARA & COMPANY Ltd (TAKARA).

Simul was founded in 1965 as an interpreting agent for Japan’s first international conference, and in 1998 became a group company.

Since its founding, the Company has supported international communication in many political, economic, and cultural areas as a leading company in the Japanese interpreting industry.

Benesse is currently pursuing a strategy focused on profit growth in the distance learning business, one of its core businesses. At the same time, Benesse is shifting to a business portfolio with a more balanced earnings structure, such as aiming for stable growth in the nursing care business.

To achieve this, the company has positioned the active use of M&A as one of its key strategies. While actively considering M&A to build the third pillar and M&A to achieve discontinuous growth in existing businesses, it is also working on “selection and concentration of businesses.”

As a result of examining the positioning of Simul in the company’s group and its business strategy for Simul in the future, it was concluded that accelerating business growth with support from TAKARA would lead to further development of Simul, and the company decided to transfer Simul stock to TAKARA.

As a result of the transfer of shares, extraordinary profit will be recorded in the full-year results for the fiscal year ending March 31 2020.

Original Text: https://ampmedia.jp/2020/03/07/benesse-2/