£26bn TAXI MEGA MERGER

A BITTER two-year battle to become China’s biggest taxi firm ended yesterday with a £26bn deal between Uber and rival Didi Chuxing.

Taxi app Uber has become a global success as customers have signed up to the service which allows you to hail and pay for a cab using your mobile phone.

But its world growth has been stemmed in China where it has failed to topple the country’s own giant cab firm Didi Chuxing.

The firm, which is owned by Chinese internet titans Tencent and Alibaba, controls almost 90pc of the market in China. Last year it provided 1.43bn rides. Uber has struggled to compete, and even though it is taking 150m travellers a month, it has racked up hundreds of millions in losses as it tries to break in to the market. The deal with Didi Chuxing is a sign that it believes co-operation is better than competition. As part of the tieup, investors in loss-making Uber China will grab a 20pc stake in Didi Chuxing.

In another sign of consolidation in the global ride hailing market, last week Daimler said its MyTaxi firm will join forces with the app Hailo to create a company with 70m passengers.