Tencent to buy 15% stake in JD.com

Chinese Internet firm Tencent plans to buy a 15 percent stake in JD.com, a major online direct sales company in China, before the latter launches its initial public offering (IPO) in the United States. The purchase, representing 251,678,637 outstanding JD ordinary shares, will cost Tencent 214.6 million U.S. dollars and its e-commerce branches, according to Tencent's statement filed with Hong Kong exchange on Monday. After the purchase, Tencent will continue to buy 5 percent of JD's outstanding ordinary shares on a post-IPO basis, the statement said. In return, JD will take over Tencent's business-to-consumer (B2C) and consumer-to-consumer (C2C) platforms wanggou.com and paipai.com, with all capital, assets, liabilities transferred to JD. It will also gain a minor stake in Tencent's other online shopping website yixun.com and the right to buy the site's remaining shares. The cooperation, dubbed as the two companies' overall business collaboration in e-commerce business, aims to win a leverage in the competition with another Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba, which owns and operates the country's largest online purchase platform. In addition, Tencent will offer JD level 1 access points at WeChat and Mobile QQ, two of the most popular communication mobile applications developed by Tencent, to boost the latter's growth in physical goods e-commerce, the statement said. The two firms will also further ties in mobile applications and payment solutions, with JD being regarded as Tencent's preferred partner in certain business areas. Liu Chiping, president of Tencent, will become a member of JD's board after the purchase agreement.