Per reporter: Wang Ziwei Per editor: Liu Xuemei
From January 18 to 19, China's large Internet companies experienced "24 hours of shock." ”
On the 19th, ByteDance insiders responded to the "Daily Economic News" that the news that its strategic investment department "has been dissolved on the evening of the 18th" is true. The person said that the company conducted an inventory and analysis of the business at the beginning of the year, decided to strengthen the business focus, reduce the investment with low synergy, disperse the employees of the strategic investment department into various business lines, and strengthen the cooperation between the strategic research function and the business. Planning discussions are also underway for the business and teams involved.
ByteDance's investment map is forming a closed ecological layout Image source: Enterprise image
Shortly after the news was announced, some media reported that on the 18th, there was also a giant that began to "retreat": Ali Entertainment withdrew from Youku shareholders on the same day, which was taken over by Tudou and held 100% of the shares. At the end of December last year, Tencent had "reduced its shareholding in JD.com by dividends".
What is the reason for the "retreat" of the big factories? There is a lot of speculation in the industry. At 4 p.m. on the 19th, the official website of the National Development and Reform Commission reported that the National Development and Reform Commission, the State Administration of Market Regulation, the Central Cyberspace Administration and other 9 departments recently jointly issued the "Several Opinions on Promoting the Healthy and Sustainable Development of platform economy norms" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"). The Opinions put forward that it is necessary to strictly regulate the investment of platform enterprises in financial institutions and local financial organizations, and urge platform enterprises and their holding and shareholding financial institutions to strictly implement capital and leverage ratio requirements.
At the same time, the "Opinions" also proposes to strictly investigate and deal with monopoly agreements in the field of platform economy, abuse of market dominance and illegal factual concentration of undertakings.
Zhao Zhanzhang, a lawyer at Beijing Yunjia Law Firm and a special researcher of the Intellectual Property Research Center of China University of Political Science and Law, told the Daily Economic News that in the past year, the state's supervision of the platform economy from the perspectives of anti-monopoly, network security review, data and personal information protection, industry norms and other aspects has achieved initial results, and the introduction of the "Opinions" means that the standardization of the platform economy will be further carried out.
Guan Yuqing, founder of Lens Research, believes that the substantive regulatory curtain against disorderly expansion has officially opened. When anti-disorder expansion supervision and anti-monopoly supervision form a synergy, it will have a profound impact on the future Internet ecological pattern in China. He said.
For large Internet companies, strategic investment in various fields was originally a matter of "four or two thousand pounds". With the help of the power of capital, dachang seizes various subdivisions of the track, through synergy effects, to make up for its own technical shortcomings and business gaps, so as to build an investment map that is no less than its own scale or even larger, achieve epitaxial growth, and also master the key resources of the Internet. Nowadays, if the investment road is cut off, does it mean that the strategy of "investment" and "increase" by big manufacturers will no longer work? Where will Internet companies with increasingly peaked development look for incremental growth in the future?
Quan Yuqing told reporters that he believes that trillions of Internet capital or will have to go to the field of hard technology.
Byte investment business is advancing rapidly
The adjustment was "temporarily implemented" on the evening of the 18th. On the 19th, a byte employee told the Daily Economic News reporter that his unread message "exploded" and "all came to ask about the authenticity of this matter." ”
According to the information of multiple independent sources, after the abolition of the byte war investment department, Zhao Pengyuan, the original number one of the war investment, will take 5 people to the president's office and be responsible for the overall strategy of the company. Some media said that some personnel of the Strategy and Investment Department transferred to the business line to do strategy, some layoffs, and the financial investment team basically laid off employees. In response, Byte responded to reporters, "The relevant business and team are still in planning discussions. ”
According to public information, ByteDance's strategic investment department was established in 2018, before that, the company's investment departments were the investment department and the strategy department (the predecessor of the strategic investment department). Before 2018, byte did not have many shots in the field of strategic investment, and there were only about 10 companies per year.
After the establishment of the Investment Strategy Department, since 2018, its investment frequency has begun to increase, reaching 21 investment companies in that year and increasing to more than 30 in 2020. Also in 2020, Byte internally divided the investment business into two parts: strategic investment and financial investment. The main business affected this time is the strategic investment part.
2021 is a year of frequent attention for Byte Investment. Since the beginning of this year, the number of investment shots has soared, and the scope has also expanded to new consumption, technology, games, artificial intelligence, new energy vehicles and other tracks, investing in or acquiring more than 60 enterprises such as Manner, a new upstart in the coffee field, a new sharp flying willow technology in the SaaS track, and Mu Hitomi Technology in the game track. According to public data, the cumulative number of byteDance foreign investment projects exceeds 400.
Looking at ByteDance's investment territory, it can be found that it relies on its strong technology and traffic advantages to gradually create a closed ecological layout in the above fields, form a complete industry chain, and in turn promote the improvement of its own business model, with the intention of achieving a virtuous circle. Byte can not only quickly enter various industries with unmatched depth and breadth through investment, and strive to expand its influence, but also can use the huge traffic of the platform to enhance its own monetization ability.
According to public information, the person in charge of byte's war investment business changes frequently. Previously, Yan Zhi, head of strategic investment at ByteDance, Hua Wei, head of HR, and Zhu Jun, vice president of product and strategy, had all been in charge of the war investment business. After the financial investment department was separated separately, the war investment department was headed by Yang Jie, who was the vice president of Sequoia Capital.
It is worth mentioning that these investment businesses are currently mainly reported to Zhou Receiving Capital. Zhou Waszi was appointed CFO of Byte in March last year, and after Byte announced the establishment of 6 major BU and postponed the listing plan in November last year, the position of CFO of Byte was left blank, and Currently Zhou Shouzi Title is the global CEO of TikTok.
2021 was supposed to be a year of high growth for Byte's investment business. But a reduction that occurred at the end of the year made the future of the Internet war investment field seem to have some metaphors:
On December 23, 2021, Tencent "reduced its holdings" with JD.com without warning.
Press the pause button with "Cast" to get "Increase"?
Obtaining growth through investment is an important part of the business growth of Internet giants in the past many years.
As early as 10 years ago, in 2011, Tencent's investment department increased its investment in foreign countries and announced the establishment of a Tencent industry win-win fund with an investment scale of 5 billion. Later, the fund was added to 10 billion yuan. At the beginning of 2020, public information showed that at that time, Tencent invested in more than 800 companies, of which more than 70 had been listed, and more than 160 were unicorn companies with a market value or valuation of more than 1 billion US dollars, and JD.com, Pinduoduo, and Meituan were listed.
2018 is the high point of Ali's overseas investment. Public data shows that its cumulative investment exceeded 110 in that year, and then declined year by year. By the end of 2020, Alibaba-affiliated enterprises had invested in 433 companies abroad, initiated/participated in 529 investment events, and the total disclosed investment amount reached RMB827.69 billion. Among them, Alibaba participated in 360 investment incidents and Ant Financial participated in 128 cases.
If you only see the business growth of the giants from investment, it is a bit one-sided. Li Chengdong of dolphin news told the "Daily Economic News" reporter that through investment and acquisition, the big factory has also gained talent and innovation.
"Many Internet manufacturers acquire and invest in a certain business, and a large part of the reason is that they do not do well in this part of the business. Through the acquisition of these Internet companies, we have gained innovation, and we have also acquired talents such as Zhang Xiaolong (Tencent acquired WeChat) and Jiang Fan (Ali acquired Youmeng). Therefore, once the strategic investment is restricted, it will have a great impact on the entire innovative business of the large factory, and it will also have a great impact on the start-up enterprises in the market. Li Chengdong said.
Tencent's "dividend reduction" JD.com is seen as a "major signal" IC Photo-1371670979453255683
He believes that investment restrictions will create another problem: there is no exit path. "There are two ways for capital to exit, one is an IPO, and the other is to be acquired by a giant. Now there are risks in IPO in the United States, and the investment of large manufacturers is also tightening", which "brings pressure to capital is also conceivable".
It is undeniable that the supervision of the Internet platform economy has increased visibly with the naked eye.
At the end of 2020, the Central Economic Work Conference clarified eight key tasks in economic work in 2021, of which "strengthening anti-monopoly and preventing the disorderly expansion of capital" were listed.
In February 2021, the Anti-Monopoly Commission of the State Council issued the Anti-Monopoly Guidelines on the Platform Economy, which clearly stated that its purpose is to "prevent and stop monopolistic behavior in the platform economy, protect fair competition in the market, promote the orderly innovation and healthy development of the platform economy, and safeguard the interests of consumers and the social public interest".
In 2021, Internet anti-monopoly incidents are frequent. According to media statistics, 39 companies were shouted and 9 companies were fined throughout the year, with a total of 20 billion fines issued.
Some industry insiders told the "Daily Economic News" reporter that whether it is anti-monopoly or "opposing the disorderly expansion of capital", it is all for the development of the industry and let the platform economy play a more stable role. "Opposing the disorderly expansion of capital is not 'anti-capital', and Internet anti-monopoly is not 'anti-Internet economy', it is the platform economy that needs to be regulated." The person said.
Guan Yuqing believes that for Internet manufacturers, the road to growth through investment is actually not blocked. Under the situation of "anti-disorderly expansion" and anti-monopoly "double anti-reverse" supervision, at least trillions of Internet capital may be forced into areas with real strategic value in the future.
"In the future, 'anti-card necks' such as semiconductors and new materials, and cutting-edge hard technology fields such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing may be the places where big companies go." He said.
A new stage of platform economic supervision has begun
On the afternoon of the day (January 18th) when the Byte War Investment team experienced a "night of horror", Ali Entertainment withdrew from the ranks of Youku's shareholders. According to Qixinbao information, the current shareholder of Youku Information Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. is Shanghai Quantudou Network Technology Co., Ltd., which is 100% owned by the latter.
In fact, before the 18th, there were already Internet giants' investment businesses quietly "retreating".
On December 23 last year, Tencent "reduced its dividend-based holdings" and distributed its JD.com shares to shareholders in the form of dividends. Some industry insiders told the "Daily Economic News" reporter that this has been seen in the industry as "a major signal that the Internet giants have adopted strategic contractions."
On January 5 this year, the website of the State Administration for Market Regulation published a total of 11 administrative punishment decisions against Ali and Tencent.
Quan Yuqing told reporters that in fact, the incident of Tencent's reduction in JD.com already has the symbolic significance of the "reverse" strategy. The penalty in early January further shed light on regulators' resolve.
"Although this penalty has nothing to do with 'preventing the disorderly expansion of capital', the cause, nature and content of the penalty seem to have been clearly declared: the regulatory curtain on 'preventing the disorderly expansion of capital' proposed by the previous regulator has been formally and substantively opened." Kuang Yuqing said.
Then, on January 19, the National Development and Reform Commission and nine other departments issued the "Several Opinions on the Healthy and Sustainable Development of Platform Economy Regulation", proposing to investigate and deal with monopolies and unfair competition in the platform economy.
Zhao Zhanzhan told the "Daily Economic News" reporter that the introduction of the "Opinions" can be seen that the state's regulation of the platform economy will continue, and some of these areas will be further strengthened.
"For example, guide platform enterprises to negotiate with online delivery personnel, online ride-hailing drivers, and platform merchants to determine a reasonable commission ratio or commission standard, such as data security and personal information protection supervision with the data security law, personal information protection law, etc. have been strengthened..."
"The promulgation of the Opinions means that [the mainland's platform economy] will enter a new regulatory stage." Zhao Zhanzhan said.
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