TikTok chief executive officer Kevin Mayer has left the short video app firm just three months since joining and days after TikTok sued the administration of US President Donald Trump over an executive order banning transactions with it in the country.
He is to be replaced by TikTok US general manager Vanessa Pappas on an interim basis, the company said.
Mayer was Walt Disney Co’s top streaming executive before joining TikTok on June 1. He was also appointed as chief operating officer of TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動).
Photo: AP
“In recent weeks, as the political environment has sharply changed, I have done significant reflection on what the corporate structural changes will require and what it means for the global role I signed up for,” Mayer said in a letter to employees.
“Against this backdrop, and as we expect to reach a resolution very soon, it is with a heavy heart that I wanted to let you all know that I have decided to leave the company,” he said.
In an e-mailed statement, TikTok confirmed Mayer’s departure and Pappas’ interim appointment.
It also confirmed the contents of the letter sent by Mayer earlier in the day.
ByteDance founder and chief executive officer Zhang Yiming (張一鳴) said in a separate internal letter that the company was “moving quickly to find resolutions to the issues that we face globally, particularly in the US and India.”
Mayer had joined just as the company was “entering arguably our most challenging moment,” Zhang said.
“It is never easy to come into a leadership position in a company moving as quickly as we are, and the circumstances following his arrival made it all the more complex,” he said.
Trump has said that TikTok is a national security threat and could share information about users with China’s government.
Trump on Aug. 6 issued an executive order banning US transactions with TikTok that takes effect in the middle of next month.
He issued a separate order on Aug. 14 giving ByteDance 90 days to divest of TikTok’s US operations and any data TikTok had gathered in the country.
ByteDance has been in talks to sell TikTok’s North American, Australian and New Zealand operations, which could be worth US$25 billion to US$30 billion, to companies including Microsoft Corp and Oracle Corp, people with knowledge of the matter have said.
The company has also been targeted in India, where TikTok was one of 59 Chinese apps banned by the Indian government in June.
FALLING BEHIND: Samsung shares have declined more than 20 percent this year, as the world’s largest chipmaker struggles in key markets and plays catch-up to rival SK Hynix Samsung Electronics Co is laying off workers in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand as part of a plan to reduce its global headcount by thousands of jobs, sources familiar with the situation said. The layoffs could affect about 10 percent of its workforces in those markets, although the numbers for each subsidiary might vary, said one of the sources, who asked not to be named because the matter is private. Job cuts are planned for other overseas subsidiaries and could reach 10 percent in certain markets, the source said. The South Korean company has about 147,000 in staff overseas, more than half
TECH PARTNERSHIP: The deal with Arizona-based Amkor would provide TSMC with advanced packing and test capacities, a requirement to serve US customers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is collaborating with Amkor Technology Inc to provide local advanced packaging and test capacities in Arizona to address customer requirements for geographical flexibility in chip manufacturing. As part of the agreement, TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, would contract turnkey advanced packaging and test services from Amkor at their planned facility in Peoria, Arizona, a joint statement released yesterday said. TSMC would leverage these services to support its customers, particularly those using TSMC’s advanced wafer fabrication facilities in Phoenix, Arizona, it said. The companies would jointly define the specific packaging technologies, such as TSMC’s Integrated
An Indian factory producing iPhone components resumed work yesterday after a fire that halted production — the third blaze to disrupt Apple Inc’s local supply chain since the start of last year. Local industrial behemoth Tata Group’s plant in Tamil Nadu, which was shut down by the unexplained fire on Saturday, is a key linchpin of Apple’s nascent supply chain in the country. A spokesperson for subsidiary Tata Electronics Pvt yesterday said that the company would restart work in “many areas of the facility today.” “We’ve been working diligently since Saturday to support our team and to identify the cause of the fire,”
China’s economic planning agency yesterday outlined details of measures aimed at boosting the economy, but refrained from major spending initiatives. The piecemeal nature of the plans announced yesterday appeared to disappoint investors who were hoping for bolder moves, and the Shanghai Composite Index gave up a 10 percent initial gain as markets reopened after a weeklong holiday to end 4.59 percent higher, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index dived 9.41 percent. Chinese National Development and Reform Commission Chairman Zheng Shanjie (鄭珊潔) said the government would frontload 100 billion yuan (US$14.2 billion) in spending from the government’s budget for next year in addition
RSS