Didi to Buy Uber's China Operations
August 01 2016 - 01:20AM
Dow Jones News
BEIJING—China's homegrown ride-hailing champion, Didi Chuxing
Technology Co., has reached a deal to acquire Uber Technologies
Inc.'s China operations, people familiar with the deal said,
marking an end to their bruising competition for passengers.
A deal could be announced as early as Monday, the people
said.
As part of a share-swap deal, Uber will become the largest
shareholder in Didi Chuxing after combining its UberChina unit with
the Chinese ride-hailing company, according to one of the
people.
The deal comes as China officially legalizes ride-hailing
services, with nationwide guidelines released last week.
Uber and Didi have duked it out for China's potentially
lucrative ride-sharing market by spending huge sums to attract
drivers and passengers to their competing services. But both the
companies' investors and Chinese regulators have exerted increasing
pressure on them to halt the expensive subsidy battle. China's new
ride-hailing regulations, which will go into effect in November,
forbid running ride-hailing services below cost.
Didi raised $7.3 billion in its latest fundraising round in
June, which included a $1 billion investment from Apple Inc. and
valuing the Chinese ride-hailing startup at $28 billion. Other
backers of Didi also include Chinese e-commerce giants Alibaba
Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd.
UberChina is backed by Chinese search giant Baidu Inc., which
will also become a shareholder in Didi after the share-swap deal is
completed, according to one of the people.
Yang Jie contributed to this article.
Write to Alyssa Abkowitz at alyssa.abkowitz@wsj.com, Rick Carew
at rick.carew@wsj.com and Eva Dou at eva.dou@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 01, 2016 01:05 ET (05:05 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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