Posted on 08/28/2020 6:33:19 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Walmart said it’s joining Microsoft in a bid for social media company TikTok’s U.S. assets, revealing its plans hours after the video company’s chief executive said he would step down.
CEO Kevin Mayer, a high-profile former Disney executive, is leaving three months after joining TikTok, in the middle of negotiations to sell the Chinese-owned short-form video app’s U.S. operations to Microsoft Corp. or Oracle Corp.
The sale of TikTok is happening as the company is under fire from the Trump administration as potential national security risk due to the vast amount of private data the app is compiling on U.S. consumers.
The Trump administration has demanded that Chinese tech firm ByteDance, which owns TikTok globally, sell its U.S. operations. Earlier this week, TikTok also filed a lawsuit at a California federal court, naming Trump and government departments as defendants, over an executive order that effectively banned it in the United States.
Walmart lauded TikTok’s integration of e-commerce and advertising capabilities in other markets and said that a three-way partnership could bring that integration to the United States. The deal would help Walmart reach customers across virtual and physical sales channels and grow its online marketplace and its advertising business. Shares of Walmart rose almost 6 percent on Aug. 27.
“We are confident that a Walmart and Microsoft partnership would meet both the expectations of U.S. TikTok users, while satisfying the concerns of U.S. government regulators,” Walmart said in a statement.
Mayer was Walt Disney Co.’s top streaming executive before becoming CEO of TikTok and chief operating officer of parent ByteDance on June 1.
Amid growing distrust between Washington and Beijing, the U.S. administration said that TikTok was a national security threat and could share information about users with the Chinese regime.
Trump issued an executive order banning U.S. transactions with TikTok on Aug. 6,
(Excerpt) Read more at theepochtimes.com ...
For those who think Walmart is any better than Target...this should give you pause.
Wonder if Sam Walton ever thought his little 5&10 store on the West side of the Bentonville Square would eventually become a MAJOR PLAYER on the world market.
Just a small 5&10 store. Then he took a chance and bought some bankrupt Ben Franklin stores....WAL-MART was born that day.
The price is to high. How can they make the money back?
By selling all their info to China
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