Walmart Pairs With Microsoft In TikTok Bid

Supermarket giant Walmart said it was joining Microsoft in a bid for social media company TikTok's US assets, revealing its plans hours after the social media company's chief executive, Kevin Mayer, said he would step down.

Mayer is leaving just three months after joining, in the middle of negotiations to sell the Chinese-owned video app's US operations to Microsoft or Oracle.

Retailer Walmart lauded TikTok's e-commerce and advertising capabilities. The sale of TikTok is happening as the company is under fire from the administration of US President Donald Trump as a potential national security risk due to the vast amount of private data the app is compiling on US consumers.

The Trump administration has demanded that China's ByteDance, which owns TikTok globally, sell its US operations. Earlier this week, TikTok also sued over an executive order effectively banning it in the United States.

"We are confident that a Walmart and Microsoft partnership would meet both the expectations of US TikTok users while satisfying the concerns of US government regulators,” Walmart said in a statement.

It said that the three-way partnership would help Walmart reach customers across virtual and physical sales channels and to grow its online marketplace and its advertising business. Shares of Walmart rose 6 percent.

ByteDance founder and CEO Zhang Yiming said in a letter that the company was "moving quickly to find resolutions to the issues that we face globally, particularly in the US and India".

He said Mayer had joined just as the company was "entering arguably our most challenging moment."

"It is never easy to come into a leadership position in a company moving as quickly as we are, and the circumstances following his arrival made it all the more complex," Zhang said.

ByteDance has been in talks to sell TikTok's North American, Australian and New Zealand operations which could be worth US$25 billion to US$30 billion to companies including Microsoft and Oracle, people with knowledge of the matter have said.

The company has also been targeted in India, where TikTok was one of 59 Chinese apps banned by the Indian government in June following a border clash between India and China.

That month, Mayer wrote to India's government saying China's government has never requested user data, nor would TikTok turn it over if asked. (Reuters)