In January, the number of mergers and acquisitions in the Internet industry ranked first. During the Spring Festival, acquisitions involved tens of billions of funds

During the Spring Festival of the Year of the Monkey, red envelopes are not the only ones that are bustling. Audiences bought it and saw it, setting a new box office record of 3.6 billion yuan in the Spring Festival movie market. Internet tycoons bought and bought, involving tens of billions of yuan in capital. According to CVSource's investment data terminal, among the transaction completion cases in China's M & A market in January this year, in terms of the industry distribution of the number of completed M & A transactions, the Internet ranked first with 29 cases.

Original title: Buy, buy, buy Internet tycoon can't stop

purchasing tens of billions during the Spring Festival Lead: During the Spring Festival of the Year of the Monkey, it's not just the red envelopes that are bustling. Audiences bought it and took a look, setting a new box office record of 3.6 billion yuan in the Spring Festival movie market. Many listed companies shared the feast, and film and television stocks gained red envelopes in performance; while Internet tycoons bought and bought, involving tens of billions of yuan in capital. Alibaba took a stake in South Korea's SM Company, and two CEOs of Baidu and iQiyi privately acquired iQiyi.

After watching the Spring Festival Gala, grabbing red envelopes, and gaining 3 pounds... the Spring Festival effect is gradually fading. So, will the total box office of China films in 2016 exceed 60 billion yuan as industry analysis? Are the Internet tycoons who have not made a move during the festival actively looking for projects? Can all this accelerate the structural transformation of China's economy? Let's wait and see in 2016.

In this era of competitive bidding, even during the Spring Festival, Internet tycoons are destined to not be idle, but buy and buy all kinds of things.

Since Youzu Network announced on February 6 that it planned to acquire 97% of Qingguo Lingdong for 1.94 billion yuan, the circle of friends has been bombarded by major acquisitions throughout the Spring Festival holiday. The one with the highest screening rate is Alibaba's acquisition of a 4% stake in South Korea's largest entertainment company SM, as well as the preliminary non-binding acquisition proposal of Baidu Chairman and CEO Robin Li and Iqiyi CEO Gong Yu for Iqiyi's equity. Robin Li and Gong Yu will acquire Baidu's entire issued shares of 80.5% of iQiyi (calculated on a converted and fully diluted basis) based on iQiyi's US$2.8 billion valuation (excluding cash and debt).

According to CVSource's investment data terminal, among the transaction completion cases in China's M & A market in January this year, in terms of the industry distribution of the number of M & A transactions completed, the three industries of the Internet, IT, and manufacturing ranked among the top in each industry segment, with 29, 29 and 25 cases accounting for 17.16%, 17.16% and 14.79% of the total number of M & A cases respectively; in terms of the industry distribution of completed M & A transactions disclosed the transaction scale, the Internet industry ranked first with US$2.892 billion, accounting for 29%.

There may be still many Internet tycoons who have not yet taken action or are still actively looking for good projects, but the entire Internet industry is destined to be unstable in 2016.

Jack Ma's purchase of 4% of SM's shares in

cultural and entertainment is one of Alibaba Group's important strategies. This Spring Festival, Jack Ma's shopping list stirred up all circles as soon as it was released.

If last year's investment in Kim Soo-hyun's new film "REAL", a subsidiary of South Korean entertainment company Keyeast, was a stone asking, then this time Jack Ma's approach is more direct, entering the South Korean entertainment industry in the form of investment and mergers. On the fourth day of the first lunar month (February 11), South Korean SM announced that it had reached a strategic cooperation with Alibaba Group to cooperate on China's music industry and e-commerce. Under the agreement, Alibaba will acquire a 4% stake in SM.

According to reports, SM will work with Alibaba Music Group (hereinafter referred to as Alibaba Music), a subsidiary of Alibaba, to carry out online music circulation, marketing promotion, MD and other businesses in China. Alibaba Group will invest in SM through a third-party allocation and paid capital increase. The new share issue price will be 40808 won per share, the number of shares issued will be 870,000 shares, and the total paid capital increase amount will be 35.5 billion won. After the capital increase, Alibaba Group will hold 4% of the shares of SM Company and become SM's strategic partner.

Internet business model analyst Hao Zhiwei told reporters that not only is SM a large copyright owner in South Korea, but more importantly, it also has many star teams, such as EXO and Girls 'Generation, and these teams have strong fan monetization capabilities. For Ali, Ali's introduction of SM into China will benefit from copyright.

There are two points in the so-called operation of copyright. Hao Zhiwei said that first, there is enough original accumulation, which SM does not lack. Of course, copyright traffic is also rich now, so it makes sense to buy its copyright; secondly, in terms of fan economy, Korean fans have extremely strong liquidity. On the other hand, for SM, Ali's advantage is that it can launch its music-like e-commerce plan (which may not be accurate). In fact, Alibaba Cloud and Alipay are both services by Alibaba for its own merchant group. For example, Alibaba Cloud can provide cloud storage, cloud computing, etc. for SM music producers.

Robin Li and Gong Yu plan to buy iQiyi

Following Jack Ma, Robin Li and Gong Yu also announced their shopping list.

On the evening of February 12, Beijing time, Baidu issued an announcement announcing that its board of directors had recently received non-binding proposals from Robin Li and Gong Yu. The proposal states that it will acquire Baidu's entire issued shares of 80.5% of iQiyi (calculated on a conversion and fully diluted basis) based on iQiyi's US$2.8 billion valuation (excluding cash and debt). Based on this non-binding proposal, the two parties will further sign a business cooperation agreement after completing the transaction to strengthen strategic cooperation.

Although Baidu's announcement stated that it is currently only a "preliminary non-binding proposal." However, Ding Daoshi, a senior Internet observer and deputy editor-in-chief of Speedu, said that once such words appear, it means that many things have been agreed behind the scenes. If there are no accidents, the acquisition can be almost 100% completed.

"The first thing to be clear is that it was not Baidu who acquired iQiyi this time, but a consortium formed by Robin Li and Gong Yu. Although Robin Li is the CEO of Baidu, Robin Li and Baidu are two different individuals." Ding Daoshi told reporters that as for why Robin Li and Gong Yu wanted to buy Baidu's shares in iQiyi, it was because Robin Li wanted to dismantle iQiyi's VIE (protocol control) structure.

Since Baidu's announcement was limited and there were not many detailed disclosures, Ding Daoshi only made some analysis and prediction to reporters: In the future, iQiyi will become an independent domestic-funded company, with a more distant relationship with Baidu, and greater independence. In this way, it can be completely listed in China.

Ding Daoshi said that in the past two years, except for a few companies such as Jingdong and 58 Tongcheng, Internet companies listed in the United States have basically experienced a large decline. On the other hand, LeTV and Storm Technology, which are listed on the A-share market, are in a completely different situation.

As for whether to return, iQiyi said that the offer will also be evaluated and decided by Baidu's board of directors. iQiyi is optimistic about the domestic capital market, but will not make listing its ultimate development goal. iQiyi will choose to launch the listing at the right time based on business development.

Lin Qi buys Qingguo Lingdong In

addition to the above-mentioned Internet tycoons, Lin Qi, chairman and CEO of Youzu Network, also made extraordinary moves this time.

Before the Spring Festival, Youzu. com, which had been suspended for a long time, disclosed its latest move and planned to issue non-public shares with a total amount of no more than 100 million shares to no more than 10 specific targets.

The 4.45 billion yuan raised in this non-public offering is mainly used to carry out online game R & D and operation business, big data analysis and operation services, and to acquire a 97% stake in Qingguo Lingdong, a leading domestic 3D cross-platform game R & D company.

According to public information, Qingguo Lingdong was established in September 2009. It is a Web3D interactive entertainment software developer and one of the few companies in China with core R & D technology. The company has successively launched well-known web games such as "Light of Darkness" and "Great War of War", with a maximum monthly turnover of 150 million yuan, and the number of online users reaching 200,000, ranking among the top ten web game developers in 2015 by Analysys Statistics. It has a cross-platform development engine Fancy3D with completely independent intellectual property rights, which can support enterprises to develop large-scale complex multi-player interactive 3D game applications based on cross-platform. The installation stock has exceeded 400 million, and it has been successfully commercialized in the form of technical authorization.

Youzu Network used the 1.94 billion yuan raised to acquire Qingguo Interactive. It is because of its Fancy3D technology engine and its core R & D team. Through this acquisition, Youzu Network's R & D team has rapidly expanded its capacity, further strengthening the layout of upstream content research and development in the game industry chain; at the same time, it has made rapid breakthroughs in the field of 3D games.

In addition, the announcement stated that 1.19 billion yuan of the funds raised by Youzu Network will be used for big data analysis and operation construction projects. The reporter of "Daily Economic News" also learned that while completing the team and technical reserves, Youzu Network raised 970 million yuan in funds from this non-public offering is planned to be used to produce a variety of IP games.

Editor: vian