Chinese tech group ByteDance, parent company of successful social network TikTok, has not thrown in the towel.
According to the
Financial Times
, he still plans to go public, despite increasing pressure from the Chinese government on tech companies in his country.
ByteDance would plan an IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in the last quarter of 2021 or at the start of 2022. The group could be valued at 400 billion dollars.
In 2020, it more than doubled its annual revenue, to $ 34.3 billion.
In order to appease the authorities, the company has increased exchanges of information with the Chinese regulator in recent months on the subject of the security of its users' data. The subject is sensitive in China. It is because of a
"serious violation of the regulations regarding the collection of personal data from users"
that the Chinese site Didi, the equivalent of Uber in China, was sanctioned a month ago by Chinese authorities.
This sanction was also intervened a week after Didi proceeded to its own IPO in New York. She is not the only example. Two other Chinese tech companies, Kanzhun and Full Truck Alliance, suffered the wrath of their country's authorities in July, just after their listing on Wall Street. Investigations were opened for the same reason as for Didi, namely
"the risks in terms of security of personal data".
The Chinese authorities have at the same time imposed new constraints on national tech companies with data from more than 1 million users and who would like to go public elsewhere than in Hong Kong. All these elements prompted ByteDance to abandon its introduction to Wall Street, and to favor Hong Kong. The climate had calmed down on the American side, however. Joe Biden gave up last June to ban TikTok, overturning the decrees taken by his predecessor Donald Trump.