A social media enthusiast, Xavier Niel (an individual shareholder in the Le Monde group) will take part, from within, in the life of one of the Major global Internet applications. The founder and shareholder of the telecom operator Free joined the board of directors of the Chinese group ByteDance, owner of the TikTok social network, at the end of August. He replaced the American Philippe Laffont, who represented the investment fund Coatue Management, one of ByteDance’s shareholders. According to the site The information, which revealed this appointment on August 31, Coatue Management would seek to resell its shares.
“We are delighted to have Xavier join our board and look forward to his advice, contributions and inspiration.”A ByteDance representative told the newspaper South China Morning Post. Xavier Niel has not commented on his appointment. According to The informationis not a shareholder of ByteDance.
Xavier Niel will sit alongside Rubo Liang, one of the co-founders of ByteDance, and another Chinese, Neil Shen, one of the directors of the investment fund Sequoia Capital. The board of directors also includes two American investors: Arthur Dantchik, co-founder of the financial company Susquehanna International, and William E. Ford, managing director of the fund General Atlantic.
This is Xavier Niel’s second position in an international group, outside of his activities in the telecommunications sector. Since March 2018, the founder of Free has been a member of the board of directors of the American investment fund KKR, one of the shareholders of ByteDance.
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Founded in 2012, ByteDance has established itself as one of the leading social media groups in China with the video app Douyin, which is now used by more than 750 million Chinese people every month. Developed for the international market, TikTok has also enjoyed immense success. The latter has just over 1.5 billion active users worldwide, making it the fourth-largest social network, behind Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.
TikTok has become a point of friction between the United States and China in recent years due to the risks it poses to American national security. On April 23, Congress passed a law requiring Chinese company ByteDance to sell its main social network within 270 days or face being banned from American territory. TikTok and ByteDance filed a complaint on May 7 in a federal court in Washington to challenge a law they describe as“unconstitutional”.
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