Billionaire McCourt says he is open to teaming up on a TikTok bid
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US businessman Frank McCourt said private equity firms and family offices have reached out to provide financing options.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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DAVOS, Switzerland – US businessman Frank McCourt is open to teaming up with other buyers on a bid to take over the US operations of TikTok as long as he can maintain control of the asset, he told Reuters at the Davos event on Jan 23.
The billionaire declined to share details on his sources of financing, but said private equity firms and family offices have reached out to provide options.
“Capital is not the issue here. The issue here is waiting for (TikTok parent) ByteDance, or the Chinese government to make a decision about the future of US TikTok,” said Mr McCourt, who spoke on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The flexibility in his much-publicised bid came shortly after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Jan 20 delaying the enforcement of a ban on the Chinese-owned popular short-video app by 75 days.
Mr Trump this week also said he “would like the United States to have a 50 per cent ownership position in a joint venture” in TikTok and that he was open to billionaires Elon Musk or Larry Ellison, chairman of Oracle, buying the social media app
Mr McCourt’s Project Liberty advocacy group submitted a bid to buy the US assets of TikTok in early January with plans to run the app on the group’s technology, which aims to let users choose how their data will be used and shared. TikTok has sued to block the US ban, but the Supreme Court upheld it in a decision last week.
Bidders
The prospect of gaining ownership over one of the world’s most recognised video sharing platforms, or at least its US audience, has drawn an increasingly long list of people and entities ranging from the world of finance, technology and entertainment.
Many in Mr Trump’s orbit, or with close ties to him, have been linked with TikTok ever since the US ban became a possibility under the administration of former president Joe Biden. Former Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin said in March 2024 he was building a consortium of investors to bid on TikTok.
Others who have expressed interest range from the chief executive of Kingdom Holding – the investment firm of Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal that was previously a large investor in what was then called Twitter – to a consortium of US investors, including Mr Jimmy Donaldson, better known by his online persona MrBeast.
But what they are actually competing to buy remains a mystery, and that is before potential bidders start to answer questions around how they will finance a deal.
Existing investors in TikTok have shown support by expressing interest to roll over partial or all stakes in a deal, according to Mr McCourt, which potentially reduces the capital needed to pull off the purchase that could cost US$20 billion (S$27 billion) without the inclusion of TikTok’s algorithm.
Support
In a meeting with the US House of Representatives’ select committee on China earlier this week, Mr McCourt and his co-bidder Kevin O’Leary received assurances that lawmakers on both sides of the US political aisle are committed to ensuring a qualified divestiture.
Mr McCourt said: “I came away with a very clear impression that the (US) Congress was quite unified on enforcing the legislation and causing either a ban or sale of US TikTok.”
To Mr McCourt, who said he has never used TikTok, the most appealing assets of the app are the users, data and the brand. His bid for TikTok does not include buying the algorithm for TikTok’s recommendation system, which is at the heart of the app’s popularity.
He wants to move TikTok’s 170 million US users to his own Project Liberty platform with digital infrastructure in the US and expects that the migration could be completed within a year if a deal happens.
Mr McCourt said he was flexible on financial arrangements of ownership as long as he can maintain control and move TikTok users to digital infrastructure developed by Project Liberty.
“This is not just about who will pay the most money,” he said. “This is about who can meet the very strict criteria laid out in the legislation and reaffirmed by the Supreme Court.” REUTERS
