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Bandai Namco Holdings Merges Lantis With Bandai Visual, Launches New Subsidiaries

Bandai Namco Holdings announced on Friday that it is restructuring its subsidiary companies.

The company will establish a new fully-owned toy and hobby subsidiary called Bandai Spirits on February 15. On April 1, the new subsidiary will absorb the figure and plastic model business from Bandai and the convenience store goods business from Banpresto. The subsidiary has a capital stock of 100 million yen (about US$923,000) and about 450 employees.

The company will merge its music business Lantis into its video division Bandai Visual on April 1 and create a new subsidiary named Bandai Namco Arts, with a capital stock of 2.1825 billion yen (about US$20.2 million) and about 240 employees. The new subsidiary aims to expand its video- and music-related live events both inside and outside the country. The company has acquired a space in Shibuya, Tokyo where it will hold live events.

In addition, the company announced that its video game and network entertainment subsidiary Bandai Namco Entertainment will be moving into e-sports. The e-sports will also make use of the company's event space.

The subsection of Bandai Namco Entertainment that focused on arcade and amusement machines will transfer to Namco, the subsidiary that handles arcade management. The resulting new subsidiary will launch on April 1 under the name Bandai Namco Amusement. The subsidiary has a capital stock of 10 billion yen (about US$92.3 million) and about 750 employees.

Bandai Namco Holdings is labeling animation studio Sunrise as its "IP creation unit." The press release stated that its function is "more than just animation production," and that it will also cooperate with the other subsidiaries to produce IP that works well with the company's goods and services.

Source: IT Media via Hachima Kikō