No Mercy No Malice

The Case Against a Microsoft-TikTok Merger

The Chinese will not be bullied into selling a global internet asset on the cheap

CNN: “Section4, the online education startup founded by NYU professor Scott Galloway, is in discussions to acquire TikTok.”

It. Could. Happen.

Hey, why not? The probability that Section4 will absorb the social platform is only slightly less likely than Microsoft or Twitter, or anybody else acquiring it. Expect several other investor relations departments to leak to the WSJ/NYT that they are in discussions to acquire TikTok, as it’s easier to create billions in value by calling the WSJ and going on background than by, you know, actually creating value.

Microsoft added Boeing to its market cap ($95 billion) on the notion that the fastest-growing social platform in the world would be served up on a platter, under the specter of a national ban yielding Satya Yuga leverage. After immigrating to the U.S. on a student visa and putting himself in a place to shepherd the creation of hundreds of billions in shareholder value, being asked by a…