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Apple Gives Up Board Seat at Chinese Ride-Hailing Company Didi

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Apple has given up its board seat at Didi Global as the Chinese ride-hailing company struggles to return to growth following crushing fines and restrictions imposed by Beijing's cyberspace regulator, reports Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

Tim-Cook-Beijing-Didi-Chuxing.jpg
Apple CEO Tim Cook with Didi Chuxing president Jean Liu in 2016​

Adrian Perica, Apple's vice president of corporate development, resigned from the board earlier this month, according to a notice posted on Didi's website.

Perica, who heads Apple's mergers and acquisitions strategy, joined Didi's board in 2016 after Apple made a $1 billion investment in the the ride hailing app. The move was described by CEO ‌Tim Cook‌ at the time as a "strategic investment" that would help Apple better understand the Chinese market.

The problems started for Didi last year, when Apple was informed by China's internet regulator that it must remove the Didi Chuxing ride hailing app from the Chinese App Store, after Beijing raised concerns about the Uber rival's possible misuse of personal data.

Didi's removal from China's mobile app stores effectively hamstrung the company and the action erased more than 80% of its market value. Then last month, following a year-long investigation, Didi was fined $1.2 billion by the Chinese government for infractions that Beijing said compromised national security.

The decision followed broader moves by Beijing to curb the influence of China's largest internet corporations and tighten the ownership of the personal data of hundreds of millions of users held by the likes of Alibaba, Tencent, and others.

Apple's investments and acquisitions have dramatically slowed over the past two years, with the tech giant being more selective in the face of a shaky economy and heightened government scrutiny.

Article Link: Apple Gives Up Board Seat at Chinese Ride-Hailing Company Didi
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2022/08/31/apple-leaves-didi-board-china/
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ponzicoinbro

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Look at the stock price over 5 years of all ride sharing, food delivery, airbnb, wework businesses.

Retail investors deep in the red with big losses. VCs and founders ran off with the money already.

These type of businesses are parasite businesses. They just feast on the blood of the masses while adding costs everywhere.

Your rent is higher because of Airbnb property speculators.

Your pollution is higher because ride sharing clogs the streets and people get tempted to use that instead of public transport.

Zero sum game and zero benefit for the masses. Only a small number of rich people gain.
 
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laptech

laptech

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I thought it was always the other way round, China invests in Western companies so it can spy and steal data. Western companies put investment into Chinese companies and the Chinese government find ways of getting the company into major trouble to the point of being shut down.
 
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iZac

iZac

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Trouble for DiDi is it’s a victim of the CCPs crackdown on big tech in the country. Companies like Tencent and Alibaba now have a chokehold on almost all social and financial transactions going on in the country.

A while ago DiDi was all about to try and float on the New York Stock market and the CCP came down on them at a similar time that Jack Ma was trying to bring the Ant Group to market and was saying some lightly antagonistic things against the party.

It all seems to have blown over somewhat and DiDi is still nationally the defacto ride sharing app but it’s international ambitions have been eviscerated. It’s probably not a good look for Apple in the eyes of the party to be actively invested in Didi anymore.
 
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laptech

laptech

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Abazigal said:
I always saw it as Apple currying favour with the Chinese government. In other words, it was less of an investment, and more of a bribe.
Click to expand...

But that is how it works in the world, a state begins to investigate a company, the company makes a big investment and the investigation goes away (temporally in many cases).

A very good example that even still makes me laugh today when I think about it is the incident between two states, the UK and India. The UK for decades has been giving India 'foreign aid' supposedly to help with the countries very poor (India used to be under British colonial rule) but it has always been seen by many as a way for the UK to push for advantages in India when ever the situation arose. A number of years ago India was mothballing it's old military airplanes and put out to tender for new airplanes. The UK government was extremely over confident it was going to win the contract because of the millions upon millions of £££ the country has given to India but in the end the tender was given to France.

So it just goes to show that even when a company or even a state pumps millions/billions of £££ or $$$ into another country/state, it can massively backfire on them. I wonder if Apple can ask for some of it's investment back.
 
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