Well well well China has given its blessing with this signature move. The joint venture includes people that we have long known would be involved like Oracle and Silver Lake but also Abu Dhabi-based MGX.
Chew noted that the new TikTok joint venture would be “majority owned by American investors, governed by a new seven-member majority-American board of directors, and subject to terms that protect Americans’ data and U.S. national security.“The U.S. joint venture will be 50% held by a consortium of new investors, including Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX with 15% each; 30.1% held by affiliates of certain existing investors of ByteDance; and 19.9% will be retained by ByteDance, the memo said.
Those existing investors in ByteDance are likely to be the U.S. based companies that do hold a pretty significant interest in ByteDance like General Atlantic, Susquehanna International Group, Sequoia Capital, KKR, Carlyle Group, Coatue Management, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs.
The 19.9% still held by ByteDance likely is what gave China a reason to give its blessing.