TikTok owner ByteDance plans to go public in Hong Kong next year. So the British business newspaper Financial Times writes, even as the Chinese authorities are cracking down on technology companies from their own country.
The IPO could take place either next quarter or early 2022, the newspaper said, citing sources. The Chinese company itself declined to comment. The Chinese newspaper 21st Century Business Herald, for its part, reported that ByteDance labelled the report about dusting its stock market plans as “false”.
ByteDance’s stock exchange plans were previously shelved, reportedly due to data security concerns. As a result, the technology company would have struggled to meet the requirements of both China and the United States for an IPO. But according to FT, Bytedance has been working on a solution. The company is now going through the assessment process and has submitted documents to the Chinese authorities. Final guidelines from ByteDance are expected after the summer.
The news about ByteDance’s renewed stock exchange plans comes at a tense time for Chinese tech companies. Last month, President Xi Jinping launched sweeping regulatory reforms targeting the technology sector. This led to a sell-off on the stock exchanges, which at one point wiped out $1.5 trillion in market capitalization of Chinese companies.
China has been tackling tech companies in all sorts of ways lately. For example, companies must comply with more rules to be able to offer loans, and China is limiting IPOs in the United States. Beijing also went after the tutoring industry.
