TikTok soon under the American flag? Behind the scenes, some are working in this direction, notably former US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. The latter declared this Thursday, March 14, that he wanted to bring together a group of investors to buy the social network, while the United States Congress could push its parent company, the Chinese giant ByteDance, to sell it.
“It’s a great company. I’m 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.
“Thug methods”
This announcement therefore follows a historic vote by the House of Representatives this Wednesday. The latter adopted a text 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. However, the outcome of the vote in the Senate still appears uncertain for the moment.
China, for its part, denounced Washington’s “thug methods” on Thursday. “If a so-called pretext of national security can be used to arbitrarily exclude successful companies from other countries, then there is no longer any fairness or justice,” Wang Wenbin, a door -spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
A value difficult to estimate
Until now, no potential buyer had officially come forward for a takeover of TikTok. 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 Timespart of which from sovereign funds in the Middle East.
Liberty recently broadened its reach by leading a group of investors who recently recapitalized troubled US regional lender 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.