Twitter goes (after) TikTok

Twitter Inc. has approached TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance and shown interest in acquiring the US operations of the video-sharing app, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters, 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 Microsof t Corp and complete such a transformative deal in the 45 days that U.S. President Donald Trump has given ByteDance to agree to a sale, the sources said on Saturday. The news of Twitter and TikTok being in preliminar y talks and Microsof t still being seen as the front-runner in bidding for the app’s U.S. operations was reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal. Twitter has a market capitalization of close to $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, according to the sources. “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 focuses on its existing business”, he added. Twitter has privately made a case that its bid would face less regulatory scrutiny than Microsoft’s, and will not face any pressure from China given that it is not active in that country, the sources said. TikTok, ByteDance and Twitter declined to comment. TikTok has come under fire from U.S. lawmakers over national security concerns surrounding data collection.