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Facebook in China latest Business & Financial news from Doug Young, the Expert on Chinese High Tech Market, (former Journalist and Chief editor at Reuters)
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on May 13. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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MIIT to Issue FDD-LTE Licenses on May 17 – Source (English article)
Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) Said To Take Steps To Open A China Sales Office (English article)
Home Inns (Nasdaq: HMIN) Reports Q1 Financial Results (PRNewswire)
Hunan Satellite TV, CCTV Fight Back Against Online Video Sites (Chinese article)
The IPO story of the year has finally begun, with word that leading Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba has finally made its first public filing for a listing in New York. But anyone hoping for a blockbuster deal that would have been the biggest tech IPO since Facebook’s (Nasdaq: FB) 2012 offering will be disappointed to learn that Alibaba is seeking to raise a relatively modest $1 billion in the deal. Alibaba made the filing as a separate media report said the company’s high-flying Yu’ebao, its financial product that competes with traditional bank savings accounts, is about to have its wings clipped with new reserve requirement regulations from the central bank. Read Full Post…
Two of this year’s biggest IPOs are both in the headlines, kicking off what’s likely to become a steady flow of news surrounding upcoming listings for e-commerce leader Alibaba and Citic Group, one of China’s oldest and most successful conglomerates. Citic is the more interesting in this latest pair of news bits, since this is the first time we’ve heard about the group’s plans to go public via a backdoor offering through its Hong Kong-listed Citic Pacific (HKEx: 267) unit. Meantime, media are reporting that investment banks are so eager to underwrite Alibaba’s IPO that they’re offering to accept record low fees for their services. Read Full Post…
All my previous predictions that e-commerce leader Alibaba would ultimately make its mega IPO in Hong Kong were wrong, with word that the company is now firmly fixed on New York for its highly anticipated share sale. In my defense, I should say that a huge surge in positive sentiment over the last 5 months towards China Internet stocks on Wall Street undoubtedly helped to change Alibaba’s mind. The company had previously stated on numerous occasions that Hong Kong was the preferred venue for its blockbuster IPO, which reports are now saying could raise up to $15 billion, making it the world’s biggest Internet offering since Facebook (Nasdaq; FB) raised $16 billion in 2012. Read Full Post…
Word that Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) CEO Dick Costolo is making a trip to China just 4 months after his company’s IPO will almost certainly set to world tweeting about whether the social networking giant could be considering a play for the world’s largest Internet market. Such a move seems just a tad unlikely in the very near future, since Costolo has previously said that China isn’t a place where Twitter can operate due to the country’s tough self-censorship laws. But much has happened in the last 4 months that could be causing him to re-think his position, including the recent entry to China by corporate networking giant LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD) and the upcoming $500 million New York IPO for Sina (Nasdaq: SINA) Weibo, often called the Twitter of China. Read Full Post…
Anti-monopoly regulator may need to brandish veto stamp
After years of fragmentation, China’s Internet has undergone a sudden and radical overhaul over the past year, with 3 major firms emerging as major consolidators. The frenzy of new tie-ups and acquisitions has been a welcome development, helping to cool overheated competition in a wide array of sectors where most companies were losing money.
But with the emergence of Alibaba, Tencent (HKEx: 700) and Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) as the 3 major consolidators, China’s anti-monopoly regulator should start to give closer scrutiny to future deals to avoid too much reduction in the competition necessary to ensure future innovation and consumer choice. Such scrutiny could and should ultimately lead to the veto of some future deals, especially larger ones, by regulators who need to become more assertive in the space. Read Full Post…
Less than 2 months after hiring a top executive to head its new push into China, professional networking leader LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD) has come out with a series of announcements on the new launch of a Chinese-language edition for its service, and also some figures for the size of its addressable market in China. The company has also rolled out its official Chinese name, Lingying, which translates roughly to “Leading Hero”, perhaps encapsulating how it hopes to position itself in the market. And in a nod to the challenges it will face, its CEO Jeff Weiner has also put out a separate lower-profile announcement detailing how the company plans to handle sensitive issues involving China’s strict censorship policies. Read Full Post…
Executives from smartphone sensation Xiaomi were playing their usual marketing tricks in the microblogging realm this past week, trumpeting an online promotion in the run-up to a more formal launch next month in Singapore, the first stop on the company’s global expansion. Meantime, US professional networking giant LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD) was moving more quietly in the other direction into China, where its recently hired top executive was tweeting about his ongoing hiring efforts as the company builds up a local operation. Read Full Post…
I haven’t written about Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) in a while, mostly because the company hasn’t made any concrete moves into China lately despite previous assertions that it would like to enter the market. But the company’s newly announced plan to purchase the popular WhatsApp mobile messaging service for up to $19 billion looks like a good opportunity to revisit the topic, and what this deal might mean for Facebook in China. Facebook’s own site has been blocked in China since 2009, making it inaccessible to the vast majority of more than 600 million Chinese web surfers. But WhatsApp is widely available, even though it competes with the wildly popular rival WeChat service from local Internet giant Tencent. (HKEx: 700)
I previously predicted that e-commerce giant Jingdong would try to make a IPO in the first half of this year, and now we’re hearing that the company has come out galloping in the Year of the Horse by filing a plan for a major New York listing. Word of the plan comes after a year-end boom for Chinese Internet IPOs in New York, most of which have soared since theirdebuts. Jingdong undoubtedly wants to try to seize some of that momentum, but equally important is keen to make its offering before the highly anticipated IPO of its much larger rival Alibaba expected later this year. Alibaba itself was also in the headlines over the Lunar New Year holiday, with the latest financials on the company adding further froth to its soaring valuation. Read Full Post…
New data is highlighting an online trend that I wrote about last year, namely that microblogs have peaked in popularity and are starting to decline, in a bad sign for leading web portal Sina (Nasdaq: SINA) as it rushes monetize and list its popular Weibo service. Frankly speaking, I’m not too optimistic anymore about the prospects for Sina Weibo, which is really just a copy of US social media pioneer Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) and hasn’t shown much ability to innovate in the rapidly changing social networking (SNS) space. All that said, I imagine this latest report from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) is prompting new urgency for Sina to separately list its Weibo unit, and that such an IPO could come later this year. Read Full Post…
