Among the facts that have emerged in TikTok's lawsuit against the U.S. government is that billionaire ByteDance Ltd. founder Zhang Yiming remains a Chinese citizen and lives in Singapore.
Zhang joins a number of corporate leaders who have moved to the island nation after years of tightening regulations and coronavirus restrictions devastated China's once freewheeling technology sector. Fellow entrepreneurs with close ties to the Asian financial hub include Alibaba Group Holding CEO Eddie Wu, a naturalized Singaporean, and crypto pioneer Wu Jihan.
Zhang is a Chinese citizen living in Singapore who currently owns about 21% of TikTok's parent stock, ByteDance said in its lawsuit challenging the TikTok divestment and banning law. The remainder will be owned by global investors and ByteDance employees.
Structure of ByteDance due to litigation | |
---|---|
Zhang Yimin | twenty one% |
Global institutions (e.g. BlackRock, General Atlantic, SIG) | 58% |
ByteDance employees (including 7,000 Americans) | twenty one% |
The billionaire spent most of 2022 overseas, mainly based in Singapore, the Information newspaper reported at the time, fueling speculation that he had applied for foreign citizenship. TikTok listed Zhang's position in a section outlining the company's influencers.
Like much of China's business elite, some ByteDance executives have shown favoritism toward the prosperous city-state in recent years.
Several years ago, Zhang handed over leadership of ByteDance to fellow co-founder and college roommate Liang Rubo, who is now also based at ByteDance. TikTok CEO Shou Chew is himself Singaporean. Other senior executives from ByteDance's China operations remain in their home country, including commercialization director Zhang Lidong.
Zhang's 21% stake in ByteDance is worth more than $40 billion, based on the company's $268 billion valuation from its recent share buyback program. The filing also shows that Zhang has continued to hold his own shares over the past year, ever since the TikTok CEO disclosed his boss's roughly 20% stake in a Congressional hearing.
Zhang's current status was revealed after TikTok filed a lawsuit against a law that requires ByteDance to benefit from the world's most successful inventions. The bill passed Congress and President Joe Biden signed it in April, beginning a 270-day countdown to the sale or U.S. ban of the popular video-sharing platform.
The lawsuit confirms expectations that ByteDance has no intention of finding a buyer for TikTok as the deadline approaches. Rather, Chinese companies are seeking to have the law declared unconstitutional, arguing that it violates the First Amendment.