LAWSON to Sell LAWSON CS Card Shareholding

2008/04/23

LAWSON, INC. ("LAWSON") has decided to sell its entire shareholding of equity-method affiliate LAWSON CS Card, INC. ("LCS"), as detailed below. As a result of this share divestiture, LCS will cease to be an equity-method affiliate of LAWSON. In a related development, LAWSON and LCS have reaffirmed their LAWSON PASS business alliance agreement and will continue offering services to cardholders as before.

1. Reason for Share Sale
LAWSON and other parties established LCS in 2002 and since then LCS has mainly issued the LAWSON PASS, a point card with a credit card function, to LAWSON customers. Thereafter, LAWSON began issuing MY LAWSON POINT standard point cards in January 2007. As of February 29, 2008, LAWSON PASS had approximately 2.84 million cardholders, while MY LAWSON POINT had approximately 3.39 million cardholders. The combined cardholder base of roughly 6.23 million members for these two cards constitutes one of the largest convenience store membership bases in Japan. LAWSON has decided to sell its entire shareholding in credit card provider LCS to Credit Saison Co., Ltd. so that it can focus on customer relationship management (CRM) activities.

2. Overview of Equity-method Affiliate Shares Being Sold
(1) Company LAWSON CS Card, INC.
(2) Representative Jun Asaki, President
(3) Address 11-2, Osaki 1-chome, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo
(4) Established February 8, 2002
(5) Main business Credit card services
(6) Fiscal year-end End of February
(7) No. of employees 25 (As of February 29, 2008)
(8) Paid-in capital 4.2 billion yen
(9) Total issued shares 160,000 shares
(10) Shareholders and shareholdings
LAWSON, INC. (50%)
Credit Saison Co., Ltd. (30%)
Mitsubishi Corporation (20%)
(11) Card transactions in most recent fiscal years

Year ended February 28, 2007 Year ended February 29, 2008

Card transactions 73,930 million yen 86,531 million yen

3. Purchaser of Shares
(1) Company Credit Saison Co., Ltd.
(2) Representative Hiroshi Rinno, President and CEO.
(3) Address 1-1, Higashi-Ikebukuro 3-chome, Toshima-ku, Tokyo
(4) Main business Credit card and financial services
(5) Relationship with LAWSON There are no capital or personnel relationships

4. No. of Shares to Be Sold, Sale Price, and Shareholding Before and After Sale
(1) Shareholding before sale 80,000 shares (50.0% shareholding)
(2) No. of shares to be sold 80,000 shares (477 million yen sale price)
(3) Shareholding after sale 0 shares (0.0% shareholding)

5. Schedule
April 23, 2008 Conclusion of share transfer agreement
April 30, 2008 Scheduled transfer of shares

6. Outlook
The sale of LCS shares will have little impact on LAWSON's operating results, and, as such, no revision has been made to the Company's consolidated and non-consolidated forecasts for the fiscal year ending February 28, 2009.

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