American Real Estate Tycoon Frank McCourt Pursues TikTok Acquisition

American real estate tycoon Frank McCourt has announced plans to acquire the U.S. business rights of the Chinese video platform TikTok.

According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and others on the 15th (local time), McCourt, former owner of the LA Dodgers, said that his Project Liberty Initiative is forming a consortium with Guggenheim Securities and others to acquire TikTok's U.S. operations. Project Liberty is an organization McCourt established in 2021 to address this issue.

McCourt stated, "If we acquire TikTok, we plan to reorganize the platform so that individual users can better control their digital identities and data."

This announcement comes amid the recent enactment of the so-called 'TikTok Ban Act' in the U.S. The law, signed by President Joe Biden, prohibits TikTok's service in the U.S. if its Chinese parent company ByteDance does not sell TikTok's U.S. business within one year. The concern is that TikTok may collect sensitive information from Americans or exert undue influence on public opinion.

Previously, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Kevin O'Leary, chairman of O'Shares ETF, also showed interest in acquiring TikTok.

ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, has stated that it cannot and will not sell its U.S. operations by the deadline. TikTok has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law.

Regardless of whether the TikTok sale actually takes place, the acquisition price is also attracting attention, WSJ reported. Estimates of TikTok's corporate value vary widely, ranging from $20 billion to over $100 billion.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.