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    Rakuten to buy cash-back site Ebates for $1B

    By SHOOTUpdated:No Comments819 Views

    By Elaine Kurtenbach, Business Writer

    TOKYO (AP) --

    Rakuten Inc. announced Tuesday it plans to buy U.S. based cash-back site Ebates for $1 billion, part of a series of overseas acquisitions aimed at building what the Japanese e-commerce company says will be the "world's largest product line-up."

    With goods ranging from toys and cat beds to luxury watches and golf clubs, Rakuten is the top Internet retailer in Japan. It has made numerous overseas acquisitions, including Cyprus-based Internet phone application Viber Media and led a $100 million investment in online scrapbook Pinterest.

    Rakuten and San Francisco, California-based Ebates both have membership-based online shopping platforms. Retailers pay Ebates to advertise their products and Ebates then gives rebates for eligible online purchases.

    Rakuten said it plans to buy all of Ebates' 32.852 million shares, financing the deal through cash, bank loans, bonds and commercial paper. Ebates was founded by two lawyers in 1998.

    Rakuten founder and president Hiroshi Mikitani has led his company through a rapid expansion in the past several years, creating a "Rakuten eco-system" of services stretching from banking and credit cards to life insurance and telecommunications.

    The Harvard MBA and former banker, listed by Forbes as Japan's 4th richest person with wealth estimated at $7.7 billion, is something of a renegade in Japan. To encourage a more global way of doing business, the company's official corporate language is English, in a policy dubbed "Englishnization."

    As a member of a government advisory panel, Mikitani complained publicly over government restrictions on online sales of some medicines, and then Rakuten subsidiary Kenko.com Inc. sued the government over the issue.

    Rakuten recently announced it had outgrown its offices in Tokyo's high-tech zone of eastern Shinagawa and plans to move into a new office tower in the suburb of Futako-Tamagawa.

    Before Rakuten's confirmation of the deal, its share price fell 1.3 percent Tuesday to 1,254 yen in Tokyo. Its shares have lost about 20 percent since the beginning of the year.

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    Actor Anthony Head, known for “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Ted Lasso,” dies at 72

    Friday, June 5, 2026
    Anthony Head arrives for the European premiere of 'The Iron Lady' on Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2012, in London. (AP Photo/Jonathan Short, File)

    Anthony Head, the suave, smooth-voiced British actor known for roles in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Ted Lasso," has died, his family said Friday. He was 72.

    Head's daughters, actors Emily and Daisy Head, told the Press Association news agency that the actor passed away due to complications from pneumonia.

    The stage and TV performer became well known to British audiences in the 1980s as one half of a will-they, won't-they romantic couple in a series of ads for Nescafe Gold Blend instant coffee. The ads were later re-shot for a U.S. audience for Taster's Choice.

    Head achieved wider fame as librarian Rupert Giles, mentor to the title character in the cult-favorite supernatural series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," which ran from 1997 to 2003.

    He most recently played Rupert Mannion, the villainous ex-husband of Hannah Waddingham's character Rebecca, in "Ted Lasso."

    "Our grief is far greater than the hole he has left behind, but we know his legacy will live on, in the shows he was a part of, and in the audiences that love them," his daughters said. "How lucky we are to know we are able to watch him doing what he loved, even when he is no longer with us."

    Head was born in London on Feb. 20, 1954 to Seafield Head, a documentary filmmaker, and Helen Shingler, an actor. His older brother, Murray, is also an actor.

    Other notable roles included playing Geoffrey Howe, the deputy to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, played by Meryl Streep, in the Oscar-winning "The Iron Lady."

    Head portrayed a prime minister himself in the sketch comedy show "Little Britain," as well as King Uther Pendragon, the father of Prince Arthur, in the "Merlin" TV series. He also appeared in "Motherland," Manchild," and "Silent Witness," along... Read More

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