US businessman Frank McCourt is open to join other buyers with an attempt to take over US tiktok operations as long as he can maintain control of the asset, he told Reuters at the Davos event on Thursday.
The billionaire refused to share details of his funding sources, but said private capital firms and family offices have managed to offer opportunities.
“Capital is not the issue here. Issuing here is waiting for (tiktok parent) bydance, or the Chinese government to make a decision on the future of the American tikhtok,” said McCourt, who spoke at the borders of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland .
The flexibility in his much -publicized offer came shortly after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday, delaying the implementation of a banned Chinese popular app with short video for 75 days.
Trump also said this week he “would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture” in Tiktok, and that he was open to billionaire Elon Musk or Larry Ellison, President of Oracle, buying social media app.
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The McCourt project advocacy group presented an attempt to buy US tiktok’s assets in early January with plans to direct the application to group technology that intends to allow users to choose how they will be used and distributed their data. Tiktok has indicted to block the US detention, but the Supreme Court supported it in a ruling last week.
supply
The prospect of gaining ownership of one of the most popular video sharing platforms in the world, or at least its audience in the US, has attracted an increasingly longer list of people and subjects ranging from the world of finance, technology and entertainment.
Many in Trump’s orbit, or with close ties with the president, have been linked to TIKK since the US detention has become an opportunity under the administration of President Joe Biden. Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in March that he was building a consortium of investors to offer Tiktok.
Others who have expressed interest range from CEO of Kingdom Holding, the investment firm of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, who was previously a major investor in what was then called Twitter, in a consortium of American investors including Jimmy Donaldson, best known by his online people “Mrbeast”.
But what they are actually competitive to buy remains a mystery, and this is before the potential bidders begin to answer questions about how they will fund a deal.
Existing Tiktok investors have shown support by expressing interest in supporting partial or all shares in an agreement, according to McCourt, which potentially reduces the capital needed to attract the purchase that can cost $ 20 billion without the inclusion of TIKKOK algorithm .
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SUPPORTING
In a meeting with the selected Committee of the Chamber of Representatives in China earlier this week, McCourt and his co-worker Kevin O’Leary received guarantees that lawmakers from both sides of the US political line are committed to securing a deviation qualified.
“I left with a very clear impression that Congress (US) was quite unified for implementing legislation and causing either a ban or sale of American tiktek,” McCourt said.
For McCourt, who said he has never used Tiktok, the most attractive assets of the application are users, data and brand. His offer for tiktok does not include the purchase of algorithms for the tiktok’s recommendation system, which is at the heart of the popularity of the application.
He wants to transfer 170 million American users to Tiktok to his platform of digital infrastructure project freedom in the US, and expects migration to be completed within a year if an agreement occurs.
McCourt said he was flexible in the financial regulations of ownership as long as he could maintain control and transfer TIKK users to digital infrastructure developed by the Liberty project.
“This is not just about what will pay more money,” he said. “This has to do with what can meet the very strict criteria set out in the legislation and be reaffirmed by the Supreme Court.”
Reporting by Krystal Hu to Davos, Switzerland; Additional reporting from David French to New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis