Baidu seeks to raise $2bn for finance unit
Chinese search engine Baidu is looking to raise up to $2 billion to take on fellow tech behemoths Alibaba and Tencent in the financial services sector, according to Reuters.
Citing sources, Reuters says that Baidu is looking to raise between $1.5 billion and $2 billion for its wholly-owned Baidu Financial Services Group. About half is expected to come through Baidu selling down its holdings.
Baidu FSG, which currently operates a mobile wallet, an online credit service and wealth management platform, is valued at around $2.8 billion.
It is dwarfed by Alibaba’s Ant Financial, worth over $60 billion, and Tencent, which has attracted hundreds of millions of users to its WeChat mobile payments service.
In August last year, Baidu and China Citic Bank received regulatory approval to launch a direct banking joint venture offering loans and deposit accounts to Chinese consumers.
