I kept refreshing the disclosure page longer than I care to admit. Not because a three-month slip is shocking in Korean corporate finance, but because this particular calendar has been rewritten so often that the dates themselves have started to feel like a character in the story. On October 7, 2026, Naver Financial and Dunamu pushed their comprehensive share swap out for a third time, from December 31, 2026, to March 31, 2027. If you have been tracking the plan to fold the operator of Upbit into Naver Financial, the latest move is less a plot twist than a familiar pause. Still, pauses have a way of changing the room. Rules that were drafts last spring may be closer to final text by the time shareholders actually vote.
The companies say the basic structure, purpose, and direction have not changed. That sentence matters, and I will come back to it. What has changed is the clock. The shareholder record date moves from October 22 to January 18, 2027. The extraordinary shareholder meeting that must approve the exchange shifts from November 19 to February 26. Closing, if the reviews land, is now penciled in for the last day of March. Dunamu’s disclosure framed the delay as cooperation with authorities still reviewing the file, not as a rethink of the deal itself.
A Third Delay That Still Leaves the Deal Intact
Perhaps the most interesting aspect is how ordinary the language sounds. Both sides are submitting materials, explaining why the combination is needed, and promising to walk through the procedures required to close. A Dunamu official put it plainly: the company will faithfully undergo the reviews and various procedures necessary to finish the transaction. That is corporate-speak for “we are not walking away, we are waiting in the hallway.” I have found that hallway time is where these deals either harden or quietly thin out. So far, the public record points to hardening.
Naver Financial wants to acquire every outstanding Dunamu share and issue its own shares to Dunamu shareholders in return. Completion would leave Naver Financial as the sole shareholder. Dunamu would sit as a wholly owned subsidiary. Naver Financial itself remains a subsidiary of the broader Naver internet group, so the chain of control runs from the platform company down through payments and, if this closes, into digital assets. The agreed exchange ratio stays in place. Other commercial terms stay in place. Only the timetable moved.
That stability is easy to skim past. It should not be. When a deal is delayed because someone is renegotiating price, the disclosure usually looks different. You see ratio adjustments, earn-outs, walk-away rights, or a sudden silence. Here the message is narrower. Extra months are needed so regulators can finish work that was already known to be unfinished. Whether that reading survives into spring is the open question.
How the Calendar Kept Sliding
The original closing target was June 30. In March, that date moved to September 30, and the shareholder meeting shifted from May 22 to August 18. A second postponement arrived in July. Closing went from September 30 to December 31, and the meeting moved to November 19. Naver Financial said then that the extra window was required to leave enough time for the competition authority’s review and for filings tied to financial regulators.
The October revision adds another quarter. The transaction, if it lands on the new date, runs into the first quarter of 2027. Boards on both sides approved the comprehensive share exchange back in November 2025. Public reporting of the plan surfaced in September 2025. By the time shareholders are asked to vote, the idea will have been in the market for roughly seventeen months. That is a long engagement for a structure the parties still describe as unchanged.
| Milestone | Earlier plan | Latest plan |
| First intended closing | June 30, 2026 | Superseded |
| Second intended closing | September 30, 2026 | Superseded |
| Third intended closing | December 31, 2026 | Superseded |
| Shareholder record date | October 22, 2026 | January 18, 2027 |
| Extraordinary meeting | November 19, 2026 | February 26, 2027 |
| Share exchange date | December 31, 2026 | March 31, 2027 |
Read that table as a map, not a verdict. Each row is a procedural gate. None of them, on their own, says the combination is doomed. Together they say the file is heavier than the first draft assumed. Competition review, financial-sector approvals linked to a change in major shareholders, and the wider debate over who may own a crypto exchange are not items you clear on a quiet afternoon.
What the Companies Are Still Promising
Strip away the dates and the pitch is familiar. Naver brings payments and online services. Dunamu brings digital asset operations, including Upbit, one of South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. The stated aim is future growth built on digital assets, not a fire sale and not a quiet wind-down of the trading business. Naver Financial has described the transaction as a way to lock in that growth path. Dunamu has said the purpose and the need for the deal are being explained to the authorities reviewing it.
We will faithfully undergo the reviews and various procedures necessary to close the transaction.
Dunamu official, October 7 disclosure context
I treat that line as a commitment to process, not a forecast of approval. Process can end in a yes, a conditional yes, or a no. The useful part is what it rules out for now: there is no public signal that the exchange ratio is being reopened, and no public signal that the wholly owned outcome has been swapped for a minority stake or a joint venture. If either of those shifts, the next disclosure will not look like this one.
Why a Share Swap, Not a Cash Bid
A comprehensive share exchange is a particular tool. Naver Financial does not simply write a check for Dunamu. It issues its own shares to Dunamu’s shareholders and, in exchange, takes all of Dunamu. Existing Dunamu owners become owners of the buyer. Control consolidates. Cash leaves the building more slowly than it would in a straight purchase, which can matter when the buyer also wants balance-sheet room for a later listing discussion.
There is a social side to that choice, even in a deal this technical. Shareholders who believed in the exchange business keep an economic interest, just one level up. Employees hear “subsidiary” rather than “asset sold and integrated until the name disappears.” Customers of a payments wallet and customers of a trading venue are not the same crowd, yet the corporate story is that they should eventually meet in one group. Whether that meeting feels natural is a product question. Whether it is allowed is a legal one.
In my experience, investors fixate on the ratio and forget the governance that follows. A wholly owned subsidiary can be run with a short chain of command. It can also inherit every regulatory obligation of the parent group. Once Dunamu sits under Naver Financial, a change in the parent’s major shareholder profile is not an abstract filing. It is a live approval item. That is one reason the calendar keeps breathing.
The Regulatory Stack Still Sitting on the Desk
Several government procedures have to finish before anyone can call this closed. The competition authority must complete a business combination review. Financial-sector approvals cover procedures connected to the change in Naver Financial’s major shareholder structure, plus notifications concerning Dunamu’s major shareholders. Those are not decorative stamps. They are the path.
- Business combination review by the competition authority, focused on whether the tie-up harms rivalry in the markets that actually overlap.
- Approvals and notices tied to who counts as a major shareholder once the exchange shares are issued.
- Any follow-up fixes to disclosure that supervisors have already flagged as relevant to investment decisions.
- The unsettled shape of digital asset legislation, especially rules on who may hold a large stake in an exchange.
Scrutiny has followed the file for much of 2026. In April, the financial supervisory authority ordered Dunamu to correct parts of its share swap disclosure after finding problems with information on future corporate restructuring and other matters considered relevant to investors. That episode is easy to file under “paperwork.” It is more than paperwork. When a supervisor tells you the story you told the market was incomplete, the next chapters get read more slowly. A third delay fits that pattern better than it fits a sudden commercial dispute.
Questions around South Korea’s developing crypto rules sit in the same backdrop. A potential clash surfaced in September between proposed ownership restrictions for cryptocurrency exchanges and existing rules for holding companies. Researchers sketched a scenario in which caps on major shareholders of exchanges could collide with requirements that holding companies keep minimum stakes in subsidiaries. Financial regulators said at the time that a final major-shareholder cap for exchanges had not been decided. The issue could touch Naver Financial if its corporate status shifts after the Dunamu transaction. The companies are, in a real sense, waiting on the final form of the legislation as much as on a single stamp.
That conflict talk arrived after the closing had already been pushed to the end of December. The latest slip to March does not resolve it. It buys time for the text to settle, or at least for counsel to map which corporate form survives contact with the text. I would not pretend the extra quarter guarantees clarity. Legislation moves on its own clock. Deals that depend on it often learn that the hard way.
Ownership Caps and the Holding Company Puzzle
Here is the tension in plain language. Exchange rules, still being written, may limit how much any one party can own. Holding-company rules, already on the books, may require a parent to own quite a lot of a subsidiary if it wants the holding-company label and the duties that come with it. Put those two instincts in one corporate diagram and you get a squeeze. Too much ownership for one statute, too little for the other.
Naver Financial’s status after the deal is the variable that makes this more than a seminar topic. If the combined group is treated in a way that triggers holding-company logic, minimum-stake rules enter the chat. If exchange legislation caps major shareholders, the wholly owned outcome that the boards approved in November 2025 has to be reconciled with that cap. Regulators have not locked the cap. Until they do, any timetable is a forecast with a footnote.
Could the parties redesign the stake to thread the needle? They could, in theory. They have not said they will. The October disclosure is explicit that structure and purpose are unchanged. That is either confidence that the final rules will allow a full subsidiary, or a decision to keep negotiating in private while the public plan stays still. Both readings are available. Only one will be true in March.
What a Wholly Owned Upbit Would Actually Mean
Upbit is the asset everyone recognizes, even if the legal buyer is a payments company. A wholly owned outcome would place the exchange under Naver Financial, and Naver Financial under the wider internet group. Day-to-day trading does not flip overnight because a share register changes. Licenses, compliance staff, custody arrangements, and the trust of active traders are not line items you re-title on a Friday.
The strategic bet is integration over time. Payments meet digital assets. Online services meet an exchange that already has scale in the domestic market. Cross-selling sounds tidy in a slide. In practice it means shared identity systems, shared risk controls, and a brand promise that a payments user and a trading user can both believe. South Korea has already shown it will police disclosure and ownership in this sector. A parent with a consumer internet footprint will be watched at least as closely as a standalone exchange.
There is also a competitive reading. A larger group behind the venue can fund product work and compliance that smaller rivals struggle to match. It can also attract the argument that scale plus a payments rail is exactly what a competition review should examine. I do not know how that review will land. I do know the companies have treated it as a real gate since the first postponement, not as a formality they expected to clear in a week.
The IPO Conversation That Cannot Start the Clock Yet
Naver Financial has previously set out a plan to consider a stock market listing after the Dunamu transaction is done. Under the version described during the earlier regulatory process, the company intends to work toward listing its shares and to form an IPO committee within one year of completing the share exchange. No final decision has been made on whether a listing happens, when it would happen, or how it would be executed.
That “within one year” clause is why the March date is not only a closing date. It is the starting gun for a committee that does not exist yet. Slip the exchange to March 31, 2027, and the one-year window runs toward early 2028. Markets do not wait politely for committees. If digital asset prices, domestic listing windows, or the legislative text move sharply before then, the committee will inherit a different world from the one imagined in late 2025.
I would keep two ideas separate. The first is intent: the buyer has said it wants to prepare for a listing path once the subsidiary is in place. The second is commitment: nobody has promised a ticker, a venue, or a valuation. Investors who treat the share swap as a backdoor IPO announcement are reading ahead of the document. The document says the committee comes after completion, and completion is now a spring 2027 hope.
Sequence still on the table: 1. Finish regulatory reviews 2. Record date, January 18, 2027 3. Shareholder vote, February 26, 2027 4. Exchange, March 31, 2027 5. IPO committee inside the following year 6. Listing decision, timing, and plan still open
Shareholders, Record Dates, and Who Actually Votes
The record date is the unglamorous hinge. Only holders on the books as of January 18, 2027, are in line for the meeting that follows. Anyone trading around that date is trading the right to vote, not just the right to a price. The extraordinary meeting on February 26 is where the exchange agreement gets its shareholder verdict. Closing on March 31 assumes that verdict is yes and that the remaining approvals are in hand.
Delays change the electorate in small ways. Funds rebalance. Retail holders come and go. A holder who bought on the September 2025 headlines is not automatically the holder who votes in February 2027. That is normal. It also means the narrative has to be re-earned. Seventeen months is long enough for a thesis to go stale if management only repeats “structure unchanged” without showing why the wait improved the odds.
What should a holder watch between now and that meeting? Not rumors about a secret ratio cut, unless a filing says so. Watch the competition review, the financial-sector notices, and any fresh correction request on disclosure. Watch whether lawmakers settle the major-shareholder question before the vote. A vote taken while the cap is still a blank box is a different vote from one taken after the box has a number in it.
A Disclosure Correction That Still Echoes
The April order to fix parts of the share swap disclosure deserves its own seat at the table. Supervisors flagged information covering future corporate restructuring and other points they considered relevant to investment decisions. In plain terms, the market was not given a full enough picture of what the combination might mean down the road.
Corrections happen. They are not a moral verdict. They do reset the burden of proof. After a fix like that, every later timetable change gets read as either prudence or drift. The companies have chosen the prudence framing three times. Credibility now depends on whether March is a date with a file behind it, or another placeholder. I lean toward the first reading only because the ratio has not moved. Drift usually shows up in the economics before it shows up in the adjectives.
Payments, Trading, and the Awkward Marriage of Users
Naver Pay and an exchange order book do not share a temperament. One is built for everyday checkout, refunds, and the feeling that money is boring on purpose. The other is built for volatility, leverage debates, and a user base that refreshes prices at midnight. Putting them under one financial subsidiary is a bet that the parent can hold both cultures without sanding either down to nothing.
The commercial logic is not mysterious. A payments network has distribution. An exchange has a product that a slice of those users already want, and a compliance machine that payments teams will have to understand if any combined feature touches both. Identity checks are a hint of the overlap. Dunamu has already received approval to use government data for know-your-customer work on the exchange. That is a narrow approval, not a preview of the share swap, but it shows how tightly identity and market access are already tied to public systems. A larger parent does not loosen that tie. It multiplies the people who must live with it.
Would I use a single app that moved me from a grocery payment to a token trade without a hard pause? Honestly, I would want the pause. The companies have not promised a blended app in the disclosure. They have promised a corporate home. Product integration, if it comes, will be a later chapter. Readers who skip ahead to that chapter are writing fan fiction until a filing describes it.
Competition Review Is Not a Rubber Stamp
A business combination review asks a blunt question: does this tie-up reduce rivalry in a way the statute cares about? Payments and crypto trading are not the same market, which is the argument the parties will want on the table. Overlaps can still appear around data, distribution, and the ability to steer users. Reviewers can clear a deal, clear it with remedies, or take longer because the markets are new enough that the precedent file is thin.
The July postponement already cited the competition review and financial filings as the reason for more time. The October postponement does not invent a new obstacle so much as admit the old one is still open. Three delays with the same explanation start to sound like a process that was scoped too tightly at the start. That is a planning critique, not evidence of a hidden veto. Still, scope errors have a cost. They consume the calendar that an IPO committee was supposed to inherit.
Extra time, in this file, has so far meant more room for reviewers, not a new price.
If a fourth delay arrives with the same sentence about structure, I would start asking harder questions about sequencing. If a fourth delay arrives with a changed ratio or a changed ownership target, the story changes category. Until then, the working assumption is regulatory drag.
South Korea’s Digital Asset Rules as the Silent Party
Legislation is the guest that did not sign the term sheet and can still rewrite it. Ownership limits, licensing duties, and the line between a financial affiliate and an exchange operator are all in motion. The September discussion of a clash between exchange caps and holding-company minimums is the clearest example. Regulators said the cap itself was not decided. That single undecided number sits under the whole “wholly owned” promise.
Companies cannot pause a market while a statute finishes. They can pause a closing, which is what these two have done. There is a reasonable case that voting in February, with another month of runway to March, is smarter than voting in November against a moving rulebook. There is also a reasonable case that waiting invites new political weather. Both cases can be true. Deal teams pick one and live with the other.
For readers outside Korea, the lesson travels. Crypto venues that want traditional parents are walking into rulebooks written for banks, holding companies, and internet platforms at the same time. The fit is imperfect everywhere. It is simply more visible here because the disclosure regime forces the timetable into public view each time it slips.
What Did Not Change, and Why That Still Counts
Let me underline the stable pieces, because delay headlines bury them.
- The exchange remains a full acquisition of Dunamu by Naver Financial through newly issued buyer shares.
- The end state on paper is still a wholly owned subsidiary, not a partial stake.
- The agreed ratio and the other transaction terms stay as previously set.
- The strategic purpose, growth tied to digital assets plus payments and online services, is restated rather than replaced.
- An IPO committee is still framed as a post-closing step inside one year, with no listing promise attached.
Stability is not the same as certainty. It does tell you the parties have not used the delay to reopen economics in public. In deal work, that is a signal. Weak deals often renegotiate when the clock slips, because the slippage itself becomes leverage. Stronger deals, or deals that cannot be repriced without blowing up a regulatory narrative, tend to freeze the numbers and move only the dates. This file looks like the second pattern. It could still become the first.
Scenarios Between Now and the End of March
I am not in the room, so these are readings, not predictions dressed up as leaks. They are the branches a careful reader can actually see.
Clean close on the new date. Reviews finish, the February meeting approves the agreement, and shares exchange on March 31. Dunamu becomes the subsidiary. The IPO committee clock starts. This is the path the disclosure describes. It requires the ownership-cap question either to allow the structure or to be resolved in a way the structure can absorb.
Another slip with the same structure. A review runs long, the record date moves again, and the ratio still does not change. Possible, given the track record. Costly for anyone who underwrote a 2026 close, and awkward for the listing story, but not fatal to the combination thesis.
Structure edit forced by the rulebook. A cap, a holding-company constraint, or a remedy in the competition review requires a stake below 100 percent, a governance ring-fence, or a different buyer entity. That would be a new deal in substance even if the press line still says “combination.” Watch the filings, not the adjectives.
Vote trouble. Less discussed, and probably less likely while both boards remain aligned, but a long delay gives holders time to organize a no. The meeting is extraordinary for a reason. Approval is a step, not a courtesy.
My own lean, offered lightly: the next meaningful document is more likely to be a regulatory update than a price update. If I am wrong, it will be because the ownership rules harden in a way the November 2025 structure cannot wear. That is the risk I would actually underwrite, not a secret collapse of the strategic rationale.
How Traders and Long-Term Holders Might Read the Same Fact
A short-term reader sees a date and a headline. Three delays can look like weakness, and weakness can be traded. A long-term reader sees a parent trying to buy an exchange with stock, under a rulebook that is still being drafted, in a market where supervisors have already sent a disclosure back for repairs. Those are different sports.
Neither reading requires a price target from me, and I will not invent one. What I will say is that timetable risk and approval risk are not the same as business risk at the exchange. Upbit can keep operating while lawyers trade letters. Volume, fees, and compliance incidents will tell you more about the operating company than a moved record date will. The share swap is about who owns that operating company, and on what terms the owner can list the parent later.
If you hold the buyer, you are underwriting dilution from the new shares plus whatever multiple the market puts on a payments firm that also owns an exchange. If you hold the target, you are underwriting the ratio and the chance that the ratio survives until March. If you hold neither and only use the venue, your practical risk is operational and regulatory, not the meeting agenda. Mixing those three seats is how people talk past each other on days like October 7.
A Wider Market That Did Not Pause for This File
While this combination waited, the domestic digital asset scene did not sit still. Other firms have been stitching institutional pipes into Korea, from securities partnerships to tokenization projects to infrastructure players eyeing on-chain financial services. None of that replaces a decision on Naver Financial and Dunamu. It does change the backdrop. A delayed subsidiary deal lands in a market that has kept signing smaller, faster arrangements.
Speed is not the same as scale. A partnership can launch in a quarter. A wholly owned exchange under a major internet group cannot, not if competition law and financial shareholder rules are doing their job. The frustration for anyone who wanted a 2026 close is understandable. The alternative, a rushed approval that supervisors later unwind, would be worse. I have a low tolerance for “move fast” speeches in businesses that custody other people’s assets. This delay, annoying as it is, sits closer to caution than to chaos.
What the One-Year IPO Window Really Buys
Forming a committee is not listing. It is permission to spend management time on bankers, audits, internal controls, and the question of which story public investors will pay for. A payments story is one multiple. An exchange story is another. A blended story is a negotiation with the market about which earnings you are allowed to count, and how you ring-fence the volatile ones.
The disclosure is careful on purpose. Intent to work toward a listing. Committee within a year of completion. No final decision on proceeding, timing, or execution. Anyone selling you certainty on a 2027 or 2028 ticker is ahead of the company. The March closing, if it happens, only opens the committee window. It does not fill it.
There is a subtle incentive worth naming. A parent that wants a listing may prefer a clean subsidiary chart before it opens the data room. Delaying the swap delays that cleanliness. It also avoids listing a story that regulators might still rewrite. Between those two goods, the companies have picked waiting. That choice will look smart if the rulebook lands in a friendly shape, and expensive if the listing window in Korea is narrow when they finally knock.
Employees, Brands, and the Quiet Work of a Subsidiary
Corporate charts do not run trading engines. People do. A wholly owned outcome raises ordinary questions that disclosures rarely answer. Does the exchange brand stay? Does compliance report locally or up through the financial parent? Do product teams share a roadmap with the payments arm, or do they stay fenced until licenses say otherwise? None of that is settled in the October notice, and it does not need to be. It will matter the week after closing more than the ratio will.
I have watched combinations where the legal close was the easy day and the brand argument was the hard year. If the purpose is growth from digital assets, the exchange identity probably stays visible. If the purpose drifts toward folding everything into a single financial app, the identity gets sanded. The current language, payments and online services beside digital asset operations, sounds like coexistence. Language can change after the vote. Culture changes more slowly than language, which is either a comfort or a warning, depending on which desk you sit at.
A Practical Checklist Before the February Meeting
If you follow this file for work rather than for sport, the useful habit is a short list you can actually check. No links required, no rumor required. Just documents.
- Any update to the business combination review, including remedies that would cap integration.
- Financial-sector notices on the buyer’s major shareholder change and on Dunamu’s major shareholders.
- Further disclosure corrections, especially anything touching post-deal restructuring.
- Legislative text, or a clear regulatory statement, on exchange ownership caps.
- Confirmation that the ratio in the meeting materials matches the ratio already agreed.
- The exact record date and meeting date, in case a fourth revision lands before January.
That list is dull. Dull is the point. The exciting version of this story, a sudden collapse or a sudden clearance, will show up as a change in one of those items. Until then, March 31 is a plan with a paper trail, not a promise carved in stone.
Why the Third Delay Is Different From the First
The first slip, from June to September, could be filed as ordinary sequencing. The second, into December, cited the competition review and financial filings in so many words. The third, into March 2027, arrives after the ownership-cap debate has been aired in public and after a supervisor has already sent disclosure back for repair. Context accumulated. The delay itself is the same shape. The room around it is not.
Does that make approval less likely? Not automatically. It makes the explanation carry more weight. “We need time for reviews” was fresh in March. By October it is a refrain. Refrains are fine if the underlying work is visible. They curdle if the only new fact each quarter is another date. The January record date and the February meeting are chances to show that the refrain has an ending. I will be more persuaded by a meeting notice that still carries the original ratio than by another paragraph about faithful cooperation.
Reading the Strategic Purpose Without the Slide Deck
Naver Financial has said the transaction is meant to secure future growth opportunities based on digital assets. That sentence can mean several operational things. It can mean the exchange stays a fee business and the parent collects the earnings. It can mean wallet users are offered asset services under a shared risk framework. It can mean the group wants a seat in whatever market structure Korea writes for tokenized instruments and stable value transfers. The disclosure does not pick among those. It does not have to, at the vote stage. It will have to, at the listing stage, because public investors ask ruder questions than merger filings do.
Growth narratives in this sector have a short shelf life if they are only narratives. The durable version is a license, a control environment, and a user base that does not leave when the parent logo appears on the about page. Dunamu already has the first two in some form, or it would not be the operator it is. The share swap tests whether those assets travel upward without losing the trust that made them valuable. That test is not settled by a record date. It is settled in the year after closing, which is exactly the year the IPO committee is supposed to study.
A Note on Tone, and on What Not to Infer
It is tempting to treat every delay as a coded retreat. Sometimes that is right. Here the companies have repeated that direction is unchanged, and they have not nibbled at the ratio in public. Infer retreat only if a later filing gives you the evidence. It is equally tempting to treat “wholly owned” as a done legal fact. It is a planned fact, subject to reviews and to a statute that has not finished speaking. Hold both cautions at once. They do not cancel out.
Another inference to skip: that Upbit’s day-to-day market role flips because a parent is late. Operating licenses and this share exchange are related, not identical. Customers do not wake up in a different venue because a shareholder meeting moved from November to February. What they might wake up to, later, is a different owner with a different appetite for product risk. That is a 2027 question if the calendar holds, and a later question if it does not.
The Group Chart, in One Breath
If the exchange completes as drawn, Dunamu is wholly owned by Naver Financial, and Naver Financial remains inside the Naver group. Control concentrates. Public shareholders of Dunamu, to the extent there are holders receiving buyer paper, look upward for their economics. The payments business and the exchange business share a financial parent without, on current documents, merging into a single license. That chart is the whole plot. Everything else is timing and permission.
Charts like that make internet groups look inevitable, as if every large platform must eventually own a market structure for money and for tokens. Inevitable is a strong word. Korea is showing the friction in public: competition review, shareholder approvals, disclosure repairs, and a live argument about ownership caps. Friction is information. It says the state has not decided that platform-plus-exchange is an automatic good. The companies are betting the decision, when it comes, still leaves room for their chart.
What I Will Be Watching in January
January 18 is only a record date, but record dates concentrate attention. By then I want to see whether the meeting materials still describe a full subsidiary, whether any remedy from the competition review has been folded into the resolution, and whether lawmakers or regulators have put a number on major-shareholder limits. If all three are quiet, the February 26 meeting is a vote on a plan the market has already memorized. If one of them has moved, the meeting is a vote on a plan the market has not priced.
March 31 remains the date on the page. I will treat it as real when the approvals listed beside it are real. Until then it is the most honest kind of corporate date: a target that has already survived two rewrites and is asking to survive a third. Targets like that are allowed. They are not owed belief in advance.
Bottom Line for Anyone Still Holding the Thread
Naver Financial and Dunamu have postponed their comprehensive share swap for a third time, to March 31, 2027. The shareholder record date is January 18. The extraordinary meeting is February 26. Structure, purpose, and ratio are unchanged on the company’s telling. Regulatory work is not finished, and a possible clash between exchange ownership limits and holding-company stake rules remains unresolved because the cap itself has not been set. An IPO committee is still a post-closing intention inside one year, not a scheduled listing.
That is the whole update, once you clear the noise. It is slower than the first press cycle promised, and more intact than a skeptical reading expected. I would rather have a slow file with a stable ratio than a fast file that has to be unwound. Whether March rewards that preference is not mine to declare. It belongs to reviewers, to a shareholder vote, and to a rulebook that is still finding its last paragraph.
If you only remember one habit from this delay, make it this: read the next disclosure for a changed number, not for a changed adjective. Adjectives have been steady since the boards said yes in November 2025. Numbers, dates, and statutory caps are where this story still has room to turn.
