According to Reuters, “China’s privately-held Dalian Wanda Group is set to launch a 5 billion yuan ($813 million) e-commerce joint venture with domestic internet giants Tencent Holdings Ltd and Baidu Inc, according to two sources familiar with the investment.”
The joint venture, an ecommerce platform, will be 70 percent owned by Wanda and 30 percent shared between Tencent and Baidu in equal proportion.
Wanda Group, controlled by Wang Jianlin, China’s wealthiest billionaire with a net worth of $16 billion according to Forbes, is one of China’s largest property-and-entertainment conglomerates. Tencent is China’s biggest listed internet firm with a market capitalisation of $156 billion while Beijing-based Baidu is China’s dominant search engine provider.
According to Forbes, the joint-venture would combine the online advantage of Alibaba’s two biggest tech rivals with the offline resources of Wanda Group. It also reports that “the new platform would allow users to use Baidu’s maps and data to access Wanda’s sprawling real estate empire in China, which ranges from shopping malls to movie theaters.” “At the same time, it would seek to take advantage of Tencent’s online payment service Tenpay to get customers pay for offline goods.”
The new venture could be announced as early as this Friday.
