National Security Panel to Meet on Oracle-TikTok Deal Tuesday -- 3rd Update
September 15 2020 - 4:58PM
Dow Jones News
By Kate Davidson and Georgia Wells
WASHINGTON -- China's ByteDance Ltd. would retain a majority
ownership stake in its TikTok app as part of a proposal to be
reviewed by national-security regulators on Tuesday with an eye
toward settling the high-profile deal by Sunday's deadline,
according to a person familiar with the situation.
The proposal also includes Oracle Corp.'s bid to become TikTok's
U.S. technology partner as part of an effort to address the
administration's national-security concerns surrounding the
Chinese-owned app
A senior administration official said the Committee on Foreign
Investment in the U.S., which includes officials from the Treasury,
Commerce and Homeland Security departments, would review the deal
at its regular meeting on Tuesday afternoon.
The review is one of the final steps before officials present
the proposed transaction to President Trump for review.
Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House that his
administration would make a decision on the pending deal "pretty
soon," adding that he has "high respect" for Larry Ellison,
Oracle's chairman.
'I heard they're very close to a deal," Mr. Trump said Tuesday
without elaborating.
In an Aug. 6 executive order, the White House effectively gave
Beijing-based ByteDance a 45-day deadline to shed its U.S.
operations or face a ban. The administration contends that the app
poses a security threat because data on U.S. consumers could be
shared with the Chinese government, a position that TikTok has
disputed.
The proposal presented to the committee involves TikTok's global
business becoming a company headquartered in the U.S. that will
remain a unit of ByteDance, according to the person familiar with
the matter. Oracle would take a minority stake in that company,
along with other possible U.S. investors including Walmart Inc.,
the person said.
ByteDance would retain a majority stake, the person said. The
Financial Times earlier reported parts of the plan.
TikTok said Monday it believes its proposal submitted to the
Treasury Department "would resolve the Administration's security
concerns."
On Monday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin confirmed that his
office received a bid proposal from Oracle for TikTok's operations
over the weekend and said that the Treasury-led Cfius panel would
review it and make a recommendation to Mr. Trump.
"We will be reviewing that at the Cfius committee this week and
then will be making a recommendation to the president and reviewing
it with him," Mr. Mnuchin said on CNBC. "From our standpoint, we'll
need to make sure that the code is, one, secure; Americans' data is
secure; that the phones are secure; and we'll be looking to have
discussions with Oracle over the next few days with our technical
teams."
Mr. Mnuchin also said the Oracle deal includes a commitment to
establish TikTok as a global company with headquarters in the U.S.,
which he said would mean 20,000 new jobs.
The Treasury secretary said he wouldn't go into all the details
of the plan, but clarified that the deadline for the sale of
TikTok's U.S. operations is Sept. 20.
Mr. Trump issued a separate executive order Aug. 6 that banned
U.S. individuals and firms from transactions involving WeChat, the
popular Chinese app owned by Tencent Holdings Ltd. that combines
text messages, mobile payments, social media and other
functions.
The proposed ban has rattled American companies doing business
in China, who worry it could disrupt their marketing campaigns and
other operations in the world's second-largest economy.
The precise outline of the WeChat ban isn't clear, however, with
Mr. Trump directing the Commerce Department to come up specific
details by Sept. 20.
In an interview last week, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross
said his department would meet that deadline and would publish
rules detailing the specific transactions that will be
prohibited.
Kate O'Keeffe contributed to this article.
Write to Kate Davidson at kate.davidson@wsj.com and Georgia
Wells at Georgia.Wells@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 15, 2020 16:43 ET (20:43 GMT)
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