TikTok Global’s ownership turns contentious
ByteDance, Oracle issue contradictory statements on control of US operations
New York/Beijing, Sept. 21:
ByteDance and Oracle Corp issued conflicting statements on Monday over the terms of an agreement they reached with the White House over the weekend to allow TikTok to continue to operate in the United States, casting doubt on US President Donald Trump’s preliminary blessing of the agreement.
China’s ByteDance was racing to avoid a crackdown on its popular shortvideo app after the US commerce department said on Friday it would block new downloads and updates to the app. US officials had expressed concern that the personal data of as many as 100 million Americans that use the app was being passed on to China’s Communist Party government.
A successful deal would allow Trump to drop his threat of shutting down TikTok and avoid alienating its army of young users ahead of the US election this November.
ByteDance said on Monday that it will own 80 per cent of TikTok Global, a newly created US company that will own most of the app’s operations worldwide. ByteDance added that TikTok Global will become its subsidiary.
Oracle and Walmart, which have agreed to take stakes in TikTok Global of 12.5 per cent and 7.5 per cent respectively, had said on Saturday that majority ownership of TikTok would be in American hands. On Monday, Oracle said ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok would be distributed to ByteDance’s investors, and that the Beijing-based firm would have no stake in TikTok Global.
Trump signed an executive order on August 14 giving ByteDance 90 days to relinquish ownership of TikTok. Oracle’s account of the deal would mean that ByteDance would be complying with that order, while ByteDance’s account would represent a policy reversal for Trump.
The White House referred to a Fox News interview on Monday, in which Trump said that
Oracle and Walmart will have “total control” over TikTok. “If we find that they don’t have total control, then we’re not going to approve the deal,” Trump said.
The commerce department postponed a ban on downloads and apps to the TikTok app that was due to take effect on Sunday by one week, to give the companies time to finalize the deal.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a US government panel that reviews deals for potential national security risks, has been overseeing the negotiations.
Some sources close to the deal have sought to reconcile the discrepancies by pointing out that 41 per cent of ByteDance is owned by US investors, so by counting this indirect ownership TikTok Global would be majority owned by US parties. One of the sources said the deal with Oracle and Walmart values TikTok Global at more than $50 billion.