The Chinese firm behind the TikTok video app is weighing up plans to open a headquarters in London, with Boris Johnson reportedly prepared to risk Donald Trump’s anger by rolling out the red carpet for the company.
The US president has been openly hostile to TikTok, amid widespread concern in the country about Chinese companies’ ties to the Communist party and the risk posed to customers’ personal information.
As discord between Beijing and Washington deepens over Trump’s stance, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is understood to have earmarked London as a potential European base.
“ByteDance is committed to being a global company,” a spokesperson for the firm said. “In light of the current situation, ByteDance has been evaluating the possibility of establishing TikTok’s headquarters outside the US to better serve our global users.”
London would make sense as a base for ByteDance from which to launch an expansion drive, given that it already employs 800 of its 1,000-strong European workforce in the UK and Ireland.
Discussions between the company and government officials had been thrown into doubt after the UK banned the Chinese telecoms firm Huawei from further involvement in the UK’s 5G mobile phone infrastructure.
According to reports in the Sun, however, a deal had since been agreed to host ByteDance in the capital after ministers concluded it was less of a security risk than Huawei.
A Downing Street spokesperson played down the report: “It would be a commercial decision and I’m not aware that one has been taken,” they said.
Moving to London could prove attractive for ByteDance given the White House’s hardline stance against the company. The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, told Fox News on Sunday that Trump was likely to take unspecified action against it in the coming days.
Microsoft said later in the day that following a conversation between its CEO, Satya Nadella, and Trump, the company would move quickly on acquisition talks with ByteDance for its US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand operations, aiming to complete the talks by 15 September.
It pledged to ensure that all private data of US users would be transferred to and remain in the US.
China’s foreign ministry said on Monday that it strongly opposed any US actions against Chinese software companies, and that it hoped Washington would stop its “discriminatory policies”.
