TikTok soon in new hands?
Former US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said this Thursday that he wanted to bring together a group of investors to buy the social network TikTok, while the United States Congress could push its parent company, the Chinese ByteDance, to sell it.
“It’s a great company.
I am going to put together a group to buy TikTok,” said the former Republican minister in Donald Trump’s government (2017-2021), “because (
the platform
) should be controlled by American interests.”
“I spoke to several people” about the project, said the former head of the investment bank Goldman Sachs, nevertheless refusing to reveal names.
Awaiting Senate vote
The House of Representatives adopted a text this Wednesday which, in the event of a favorable vote in the Senate and promulgation by American President Joe Biden, would force ByteDance to sell TikTok, under penalty of banning the social network in the United States.
The outcome of the vote in the Senate, however, appears uncertain.
Until then, no potential buyer had officially come forward.
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The Wall Street Journal nevertheless reported that the former boss of video game publisher Activision Blizzard Bobby Kotick had expressed his interest to the co-founder of ByteDance, Zhang Yiming.
The value of TikTok is difficult to estimate, especially in the case of a forced sale.
In 2020, ByteDance had set its price at $60 billion when the government of Donald Trump wanted to force it to part with it, according to the Bloomberg agency.
After leaving the US government, Steven Mnuchin founded a private equity firm, Liberty Strategic Capital, with a particular interest in the technology sector.
It quickly raised $2.5 billion from investors, according to the New York Times, including part from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds.
Also read: Why Europe is opening proceedings against TikTok
Liberty recently broadened its reach by leading a group of investors, which has just recapitalized the ailing US regional credit institution New York Community Bancorp to the tune of $1.05 billion.
When Steven Mnuchin entered government in 2017, his fortune was estimated by several American media at around $400 million.