Follow the example of America! CEO of German media giant Springer proposes to acquire TikTok’s European business

Mathias Döpfner, CEO of German media giant Axel Springer. (Reuters)

The British "Financial Times" reported that Mathias Döpfner, CEO of German media giant Axel Springer, proposed to acquire TikTok's European business, hoping to facilitate an external ownership change of the short video and audio sharing platform and transfer it to the control of local European forces.

Dopfner made the proposal during a January meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump's son-in-law Charles Kushner at Springer's headquarters in Berlin. The meeting was set to be a discussion on anti-Semitism on social media and included influential political and media figures.

The proposal was later conveyed to European Commission officials but failed to make progress, the report said. TikTok parent company ByteDance refuted the claim, stressing that it has not yet conducted any formal acquisition talks. Springer confirmed that it is interested in finding a solution for TikTok's European business.

The proposal is similar to the restructuring plan for TikTok’s U.S. operations, which is based on an agreement between the U.S. government and ByteDance to address national security concerns raised by the outside world about TikTok’s Chinese ownership. The agreement led to the establishment of a joint venture led by Oracle with a market value of US$14 billion.

Dopfner had previously advocated transferring TikTok to democratic shareholders, claiming that the short video sharing platform could be used as a propaganda tool. A potential investment in TikTok's European business would mean trying to change its ownership, rather than simply restricting European users from accessing the platform.

Springer owns Politico and the British newspaper The Telegraph, as well as Germany's Bild and Die Welt, and has expanded its international media footprint through mergers and acquisitions.