While President Joe Biden signed legislation on Wednesday that would force Chinese tech giant ByteDance to sell TikTok in nine months or else be banned in the United States, the question of who could actually swoop in and buy the social media platform remains.
TikTok says it plans to challenge the legislation in court, threatening to use America’s laws against the United States, but if the effort fails, the social media platform would need to find a buyer quickly, as it has nine months to sell before being banned.
TikTok influencers Florin Vitan (L) and Alessia Lanza perform a video for the social network TikTok in the “Defhouse”, a TikTok influencers incubator (Photo by MIGUEL MEDINA/AFP via Getty Images)
Kevin O’Leary, chairman of O’Leary Ventures, speaks during the DC Blockchain Summit in Washington, D.C., US, on Tuesday, May 24, 2022. Photographer: Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg
While a lot of potential buyers — from tech companies to retailers to private equity firms to investment bankers — will probably come out of the woodwork vying to purchase TikTok, experts and analysts say some candidates are more likely to buy the app than others, according to a report by CNN.
Legal experts and business analysts told the outlet that U.S. tech giants like Meta and Google are not likely to swoop in, as their large social media presence would trigger antitrust red flags.
Meta, meanwhile, is already wrapped up in a FTC lawsuit that claims the tech giant’s purchase of WhatsApp and Instagram violated U.S. antitrust law.
Google is also dealing with an antitrust lawsuit involving its search and advertising technology businesses, which experts say makes it a bad candidate to buy TikTok.
“If it’s Amazon, Microsoft, Google, or Meta, I just think you’re going to see substantial antitrust concern,” Gene Kimmelman, a former Justice Department antitrust official, told CNN.
“If you were to say, like, an Intel, or a Cisco, maybe Oracle, I don’t know,” Kimmelman added. “If you were to tell me it’s Verizon, or AT&T, maybe it’s not as big of a problem.”
Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at Emarketer, pointed out a potential catch-22, noting that only the largest, most dominant tech giants may be the ones with the resources to buy TikTok.
Meanwhile, experts believe that Microsoft might have an opportunity to buy TikTok, noting its recent success in overcoming ano FTC lawsuit when it sought to buy the video game company Activision Blizzard “in one of the largest tech mergers in history,” CNN reported.
Experts also reportedly noted that former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin could also be a likely candidate. As Breitbart News reported last month, Mnuchin said he was building an investor group to buy TikTok from ByteDance.
Former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has also expressed interest in buying the Chinese app, as well as Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary, “Mr. Wondeful” on the Shark Tank TV show and the chairman of the private venture capital firm, O’Leary Ventures.
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