700丨The Market Supervision Bureau approves Tencent's acquisition of Himalaya, with five restrictive commitments

The State Administration for Market Regulation stated that additional restrictive conditions were approved for Tencent Holdings (00700) to acquire a stake in the Chinese podcast startup Ximalaya.

After a comprehensive review and scientific demonstration, the State Administration for Market Regulation made a conditional approval decision for the acquisition in accordance with the law, requiring Tencent, Ximalaya, and the entities after the concentration to make five restrictive commitments: not to raise prices for online audio streaming platform services, reduce service levels, or impose unreasonable transaction conditions; not to decrease the proportion of free content and popular free content on online audio streaming platforms; not to reach exclusive licensing agreements with copyright holders of online audio streaming platforms, and to terminate existing exclusive licensing agreements within the specified period; not to bundle online audio streaming platforms or online music streaming platforms with car manufacturers, or hinder or restrict their procurement of competitors’ products; not to restrict hosts from registering or distributing their copyrighted works on multiple online audio streaming platforms.

After evaluation, the State Administration for Market Regulation believes that this commitment plan can effectively reduce the competition issues caused by the concentration, and can safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of consumers, copyright holders, hosts, and car manufacturers, maintaining fair competition in the relevant markets.

Tencent Music, a subsidiary of Tencent (01698), proposed in June last year to acquire a stake in Ximalaya through a cash payment of 1.26 billion USD (approximately 9.83 billion HKD) plus the issuance of about 5.19% new shares.