Meituan Acquisition of Mobike Seems a Done Deal

This post comes courtesy of our content partners at TechNode.

On Tuesday, a Mobike shareholder meeting voted in favor of the Meituan acquisition, as reported by Beijing News (in Chinese). The Chinese group buying site Meituan agrees to acquire the bike rental company Mobike for 35 percent in equity and 65 percent in cash, of which USD 320 million will be used for future liquidity needs.

Details revealed A- and B-round investors and the Mobike founding team is exiting the company with USD 750 million in cash. A source at Meituan has confirmed the purchase to TechNode. According to Beijing News, some founding team members did not want to sell and were forced to leave the company.

In a WeChat post, Hu Weiwei, Mobike’s co-founder and president, wrote: “There is no such thing as being ‘voted out,’ from my perspective everything is a new beginning.”

On Tuesday, rumors and unconfirmed details about Meituan acquiring Mobike for USD 3.7 billion were circulating on Chinese social media. Later in the evening, local media reported that Meituan was in talks with Mobike to buy a large share of the bike-rental business. However, the Mobike team denied the validity of the rumor (in Chinese) in the media chat group.

Meituan CEO Wang Xing released an internal statement on Wednesday (Apr 4) confirming the Mobike acquisition. Wang added that Mobike will maintain an independent brand and will continue to operate independently.

Later in the day, the two released a joint statement to officially announced the Mobike acquisition. Mobike CEO Wang Xiaofeng said in the statement that the two companies share the same vision of promoting a healthy lifestyle. “In the future, Mobike and Meituan will continue to focus on creating user value and experiences that surprise the users.” According to the statement, Wang Xing is named the new chairman of the Mobike, but there will be no other change to the company’s management team – Wang Xiaofeng will remain CEO of the company and Hu Weiwei, the president.

It is worth noting that Didi and Softbank intended to become a shareholder in Mobike but the deal eventually fell through. Meituan recently entered the ride-hailing ring and become a fierce rival to Didi, whether the bike-rental business is the extension of the ride-hailing war it is much speculated about.

Images courtesy of TechNode

Comments

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One look at the way they treat their squat toilets should tell you, after they take a dump, they don't give a shit to flush the toilet. Why would they treat bikes any differently?

It's a shame, all chinese make a so irresponsible use of this service.. have no remorse on dump the bikes in the middle of the ring road or in any tree. The government dont do anything to remediate this, and the people is very unconsiderated when its not their bike.. they don't hesitate to dump it in the middle of the crosswalk, in the middle of the street, in the door of a shop, or anywhere... users with this kind of behaviour should get penalty from the bike renters.. but they also dont do anything.. they only focus on cash and dont care the bad image, unconfortable situations and disrispectful use from their users.. cash is cash.

Shall they continue to surprise customers with new experiences? A unique experience for me would be clearing the streets of broken or outdated bikes instead of just paying some migrant workers a pittance to haul them into graveyards in the suburbs.

Pity the man too dense for satire.

All accents are equal, except some accents are more equal than others.