Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Well as I was always told as a young lad, if you commit , don’t show weakness, hold firm and when the opportunity presents itself, seize the moment, enjoy the rewards (or wait 6 months) and then enjoy the rewards.
Decision time tomorrow.
At 10 March 2020, the Company was aware of the following direct or indirect interests representing 5% or more of the Company's issued share capital:
No. of shares
Percentage of
issued share capital
HC Investment Holdings Limited (Note i)
20,000,000
23.5%
Yue Wai Keung
4,837,500
5.7%
Luis Chi Leung Tong
5,000,000
5.9%
Henry Ying Chew Cheong
11,722,620
13.8%
Aurora Nominees Limited (Note ii)
18,750,000
22.0%
Vidacos Nominees Limited (Note ii)
5,500,000
6.5%
TikTok’s decision to establish its first European data centre in Ireland, representing a substantial investment here by the company, is very welcome and, following on from the establishment of its EMEA Trust & Safety Hub in Dublin earlier in the year, positions Ireland as an important location in the company’s global operations,” IDA Ireland CEO Martin Shanahan said.
https://sputniknews.com/science/202008061080083485-tiktok-to-build-first-euro-data-centre-worth-500m-in-ireland-amid-trump-trade-war-microsoft-talks/
Australian prime minister Scott Morrison said at a major security forum this week that he saw 'no evidence' of data abuse in the popular social media platform and that Canberra had "a good look" at potential security threats. Chinese ambassador to the US, Ciu Tiankai, slammed Trump's comments, stating that forcing the TikTok sale would violate US free market principles.
Microsoft has posted a statement today on its corporate blog that says it will continue discussions on a potential TikTok purchase in the U.S. As a part of the statement, it says that it may invite other “American investors” to participate on a minority basis.
The purchase would cover TikTok operations in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand and would result in Microsoft owning and operating it in those markets. One region not mentioned here is India, which could provide an interesting future opportunity for both companies if this deal goes down. If Microsoft can position itself as a steward of TikTok, it removes the data issue (if not the over-arching national tensions between China and India).
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here, and myself here, and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode.
As you probably expected, we had a lot to say about the TikTok -Microsoft tie-up that is somehow still afoot. Other things happened too, don’t worry. Here’s the rundown:
The TikTok-Microsoft deal is back on.
Lordstown Motors is looking to go public via a SPAC. To which we have to say that the EV boom and SPAC crush are going to fuse and lose some people a lot of money. Not this deal, necessarily, mind.
Google is dumping money into ADT as part of a Nest deal.
And Zoom’s latest move regarding the Chinese market feels like a harbinger of times to come.
On the TikTok front, Microsoft never really fully abandoned consumer hardware and software, it just pruned deeply under its current CEO Satya Nadella. Windows Phone? Gone. Surface? Bigger than ever. Mixer? No. Bing? Yep. That sort of thing. And Microsoft, like any modern super-platform, doesn’t just want to own your time when you are at work. It wants to burn your eyes out around the clock.
For a host of ByteDance backers like Yuri Milner, Sequoia Capital China, General Atlantic, SoftBank and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the deal could be rather lucrative, we presume.
Rounds for Wejo (coverage here), Lezzoo (coverage here) and Feather (coverage here).
Finally, why does Microsoft want to buy TikTok? We had a number of ideas that all sort of summed to maybe, but when we ran through the big tech companies that were possible suitors — ports in the Trump storm — maybe Microsoft makes more sense than we would have guessed?
https://www.ft.com/content/235b431c-bf4d-4baf-b84a-ff8ab5f45761