SHANGHAI — China’s market regulator is investigating Meituan unit Beijing Sankuai Information Technology for suspected violations of unfair competition laws, the country’s official CCTV broadcaster reported on Saturday.
China has been cracking down on monopolistic behavior, most recently fining Trip.com 5.2 billion yuan ($776.41 million) over what the regulator said was its online hotel-booking monopoly, as Beijing struggles to bolster consumption amid a slowing economy.
The Beijing branch of the State Administration for Market Regulation said Alibaba unit Hangzhou Taomei Aviation Services, Tongcheng Network Technology and Tujia Online Information Technology (Tianjin) were also subject to investigation after preliminary findings, according to CCTV.
Tongcheng and Tujia said in posts on their official WeChat accounts that their operations are normal and that they are cooperating with authorities.
Meituan said in a post on its official website that it will cooperate with authorities.
Hangzhou Taomei said in an official WeChat post it is cooperating with regulators.
The China Hotel Association said on Saturday that Beijing’s branch of SAMR has started investigating four online hotel and travel booking platforms for unfair competitive practices, without identifying the operators of the platforms.
The statement on the association’s website said the move followed a meeting held by the SAMR and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism for the online booking industry. REUTERS
PARAMOUNT and states seeking to block its $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. could settle as soon as this weekend, with independent content monitoring of CNN among the terms under discussion, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday.
A commitment on the number of theatrical releases is also among the terms being discussed as part of a settlement, the sources said.
Paramount’s shares rose nearly 7 percent after markets closed. Warner Bros. Discovery shares were up 8.4 percent in after-market trading.
The case brought by California and 11 other states is one of the final hurdles to Paramount’s bid to become a major rival of Netflix and Disney. A settlement this week would help Paramount avoid paying millions of dollars in fees to Warner Bros. shareholders.
A spokesman for the California Department of Justice said potential settlement talks are confidential. “We cannot confirm or deny whether settlement talks are occurring or their alleged substance,” the spokesman said.
Paramount CEO David Ellison has staked his company’s future on what he sees as a necessary bid to consolidate two of Hollywood’s biggest studios and unite a wide range of TV properties, as he and others in Hollywood wrestle with a decades-long market erosion.
The combination would unite a raft of valuable media properties, including CNN, HBO, “Harry Potter,” “The Daily Show,” and rights to NFL football games.
Paramount is on the hook to pay $7 million a day “ticking fee” to Warner Bros. shareholders each day after Sept. 30 until the deal closes. The sweetener was meant to signal confidence to Warner investors.
Trump administration regulators cleared the deal, but in July the states sued to block it, arguing the combined company would create a media behemoth with the power to raise prices in movies and television.
The Writers Guild of America has also sued to stop the transaction, arguing it would decrease pay and worsen working conditions for film and television writers.
A WGA spokesman did not immediately respond to comment on whether the union is part of talks with Paramount and the states.
Other potential settlement terms could not be immediately determined. California Attorney General Rob Bonta has said that structural remedies, which include selling off parts of a business, are more effective to protect competition than companies promising to take specific actions.
Ellison has previously vowed that the combined film studios would release 30 movies a year.
Lawmakers have criticized Ellison for tailoring news coverage at Paramount-owned CBS News to favor President Donald Trump. Critics fear how he would manage Warner’s CNN once it comes under his ownership.
REUTERS
BERLIN — Volkswagen’s sweeping turnaround plan foresees more than 4,000 further job cuts at Porsche, German business daily Handelsblatt reported on Saturday, following a profit warning linked to problems at the sports car subsidiary.
Files documenting a recent agreement by Volkswagen’s supervisory board to usher in the German auto group’s largest restructuring yet propose a reduction of “about 4,100 employees” at the brand, addressing an overhead shortfall of some €700 million ($803.8 million), according to Handelsblatt.
The newspaper said the cuts would be “in addition to existing agreements.”
In July, Porsche management and labor representatives agreed to an additional 5,000 layoffs on top of 4,000 determined earlier, bringing the scope of currently agreed job cuts at the Stuttgart-based 911 maker to around one in five by 2035.
The parent company can only recommend, but not mandate, such measures at Porsche.
Volkswagen on Friday revised down its full-year margin target, now hoping for 1 percent at best rather than a previous range of 4.0-5.5 percent.
The revision was due in large part to a writedown at Porsche, where CEO Michael Leiters is under pressure to deliver a comeback strategy following a collapse in China sales and a costly reversal of the carmaker’s EV strategy. REUTERS
VALENTE
ABOUT $18 billion in loans tied to an Oracle-leased data center in New Mexico has come under pressure, with loans quoted at 89 to 91 cents on the dollar by syndicate banks including Santander and Jefferies, the Financial Times reported on Friday.
The development comes amid concerns that growing local opposition to the project over fears it would impact water supply and air quality could derail Oracle’s massive AI infrastructure build-out, the FT report said.
The 1,400-acre “Project Jupiter” campus in Doña Ana County is part of Oracle’s broader agreement with OpenAI to provide AI computing capacity.
The project secured $18 billion in loans from a consortium of banks late last year to kick-start construction, according to media reports.
Efforts to sell the debt to a broader pool of investors have stalled amid concerns over Oracle’s rising borrowing and weakening creditworthiness, the Financial Times said.
Oracle’s corporate credit rating sits one notch above junk following a downgrade from S&P in July. Banks were now forced to hold more Oracle-linked project debt on their balance sheets than initially planned, the Financial Times said.
Oracle has been ramping up spending to finance its expansion into AI infrastructure, while its rising debt load has drawn increasing investor scrutiny.
Project Jupiter was initially set to be powered by 2.2 gigawatts of gas turbines, but the state land office blocked a request to run a natural gas pipeline to the data center, the report said. REUTERS
