Trump Puts TikTok Deal in Doubt: The Information’s Tech Briefing

It’s rare to see M&A end up in complete confusion, as the TikTok deal now seems to be, but then again, it’s rare for M&A to be driven by President Trump. His comments to Fox News Monday morning that TikTok would be “totally controlled by Oracle...and if we find that they don’t have total control then we’re not going to approve the deal” suggests that Trump hasn’t been, um, paying attention to the details. 

Oracle is buying just 12.5% of TikTok, and as we noted on Sunday, the biggest shareholder in TikTok Global once it is separated from ByteDance now looks likely to be Zhang Yiming, the CEO of ByteDance. So not only does it not look like Oracle will have “total control,” it seems it won’t have any control. Chances are, the current CEO will continue to run things.