Tencent, Kakao, Three Others To Make Bids For Nexon Holding Company

Nexon's holding firm, NXC Corp, has reportedly narrowed its list of bidders down to five companies. That list includes Chinese internet giant Tencent, along with South Korea's Kakao, best known in the West for publishing Black Desert Online.

This comes via Reuters, which got its information from the Korea Economic Daily newspaper. Other potential bidders include private equity firms Bain Capital and MBK Partners, but not Netmarble, which was previously reported as forming a partnership with Tencent. Instead, Tencent appears to be going it alone now, while Netmarble is part of the MBK group. The identity of the fifth potential bidder is "an unidentified private equity firm."

That would seem to rule out the foreign media companies whose names were dropped in last week's news about the sale, though it's possible that, like Netmarble and MBK, they could be a part of the fifth bidder.

The value of the sale is reported to be about 15 billion South Korean won, or about $13.3 billion, up from the high of $10 billion that was initially reported. The formal bidding process will take place in early April.