TikTok granted US sale extension
November 27, 2020
TikTok, the video-sharing social media app, has again been given a last-minute extension to finalise a deal to sell off its US business in order to avoid a ban.
Parent company ByteDance has been in talks for several weeks with Walmart and Oracle about shifting TikTok’s US assets under their umbrella. It follows an August directive from President Donald Trump to find a buyer or be shut down. The US government blamed national security concerns for the decision.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) has now granted ByteDance a one-week extension to the previous November 27th deadline, which itself had been subject to several extensions.
CFIUS said it wanted time “to review a revised submission that the committee recently received”.
ByteDance said in November that it had had no feedback from the US government for two months.
Now that Joe Biden has won the US election, TikTok will be keen to find out what his approach to Chinese firms working in the US will be. However, he has not yet clarified what his stance will be on TikTok’s procedures in the US.