Twitter Inc has approached TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動), to express an interest in acquiring the US operations of the video-sharing app, two people familiar with the matter told reporters, as experts raised doubts over Twitter’s ability to put together financing for a potential deal.
It is far from certain that Twitter would be able to outbid Microsoft Corp and complete such a transformative deal in the 45 days that US President Donald Trump has given ByteDance to agree to a sale, the sources said on Saturday.
The news of Twitter and TikTok being in preliminary talks and Microsoft still being seen as the front-runner in bidding for the app’s US operations was reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal.
Photo: AFP
Twitter has a market capitalization of close to US$30 billion, almost as much as the valuation of TikTok’s assets to be divested, and would need to raise additional capital to fund the deal, the sources said.
“Twitter will have a hard time putting together enough financing to acquire even the US operations of TikTok. It doesn’t have enough borrowing capacity,” said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan.
“If it [Twitter] tries to put together an investor group, the terms will be tough. Twitter’s own shareholders might prefer that management focus on its existing business,” he added.
One of Twitter’s shareholders, private equity firm Silver Lake Managament LLC, is interested in helping fund a potential deal, one of the sources added.
Twitter has also privately made a case that its bid would face less regulatory scrutiny than Microsoft’s, and would not face any pressure from China given that it is not active in that country, the sources said.
TikTok has come under fire from US lawmakers over national security concerns surrounding data collection.
On Thursday, Trump unveiled bans on US transactions with the China-based owners of messaging app WeChat (微信) and TikTok, escalating tensions between the two countries.
Trump last week said that he would support Microsoft’s efforts to buy TikTok’s US operations if the US government got a “substantial portion” of the proceeds.
The Financial Times on Thursday reported that Microsoft has expanded negotiations and was after the app’s entire global operations.
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
RSS