IR Information

Establishment of "B to B" (inter-company e-commerce) Joint Venture

Sakura Bank Ltd (Sakura), Toshiba Corp. (Toshiba) and Mitsui & Co. (Mitsui) have reached basic agreement to start "B to B" business, inter-company e-commerce, in Japan, together with "bex.com. co.", a Singapore based company which is developing global electronic "B to B" trading network..

As the background of this agreement, Sakura, Toshiba and Mitsui share the following concepts;

1. Japan is entering into a new stage, or a new network society, where huge increase of the business use of Internet, in line with personal use, is expected.

2. For corporate activities on this new stage, it is more and more important than before, to review and reconstruct existing business models, as well as to establish new models, in order to acquire global standard and security .

3. Many companies have started to research using B to B efficiently because B to B could be a powerful tool to solve various matters on the new stage.

Jointly with bex.com, Sakura, Toshiba and Mitsui will establish a new company by April 2000, by gathering each know-how to supply a new business model to Japanese market. The new model will totally deal with information related to technology, logistic and settlement.

<Plan of the new company>

Name	NBEXCO (NBEX)
Capital	around Yen 2 billion
Start of business	April, 2000
Number of Staff	around 20
Offices	Headquarter (in Tokyo) only
Business Area	To establish, operate, consult and customize "B to B" functions to clients through Internet
Business scale	350 new clients in the first year

<Operation of NBEX>

Introduce Japanese-style adjusted business models of IBEX Singapore and Taiwan to Japanese clients, in order to develop B to B business in Japan.
Customize the business models to be suitable for each client's specific demand, in order to support the client to develop SCM and EC business effectively.
In addition to the above, Sakura, Toshiba and Mitsui consider using the models for their own business.