Sony to enter real estate business - Nikkei

(Reuters) - Sony Corp will branch out into the real-estate business in August and plans to take the unit public in three years, the Nikkei reported without citing a source.

Sony recently set up a real-estate unit in Tokyo, with the aim of generating annual sales of 50 billion yen (291 million pounds) in five years, the newspaper said.

The real-estate foray marks the first initiative of a new project team at Sony that specializes in creating new businesses and aims at developing more than 10 new businesses over the next three years, the business daily reported.

(Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bangalore, Editing by Simon Jennings)