China’s Top Taxi-Hailing Apps Say They Will Merge
By PAUL MOZUR

HONG KONG — If you can’t beat them, join them.

That seems to be the thinking behind a Saturday announcement that China’s two largest taxi-hailing mobile applications, Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache, will complete a “strategic merger.”

The unlikely tie-up comes after a year of cash-fueled competition between the two companies. With the gaming giant Tencent backing Didi Dache and the e-commerce powerhouse Alibaba supporting Kuaidi Dache, the two start-ups spent hundreds of millions on promotions in what was widely seen as a proxy war between China’s two largest Internet companies.

Drawing on the massive support from Tencent and Alibaba, each app offered rebates to customers who used it, as well as large daily tips to drivers. The idea was that through the taxi apps, Tencent and Alibaba could lure users to other smartphone services.

Kuaidi is connected to Alibaba’s mobile payment system, while Didi works through Tencent’s enormously popular messaging application WeChat.

The merger, which is expected to be worth about $6 billion, was likely driven in part by a recognition from each side that the huge expenditures had failed to win the market. Despite investment and spending well over $1 billion in total, Didi and Kuaidi are at a stalemate, with each controlling about half of the market for taxi-hailing applications.

In an unconventional move that indicated the tie-up might be more about eliminating competition than cooperating, the companies said that they would operate independently and retain their separate brands.

Though Tencent and Alibaba dominate different sectors, competition between the two has grown heated over the past two years, as both have moved beyond their core competencies to woo China’s more than 600 million smartphone users to their services.

Still, there is precedent for the two cooperating. Both companies are shareholders in an online insurance operation run in cooperation with Ping An Insurance.

In the statement Saturday, Didi and Kuaidi said that they would release more information after the Chinese New Year holiday, which begins next week.

Also likely after Chinese New Year, according to analysts, could be scrutiny of the deal by Chinese regulators. China’s antimonopoly regulator has mostly left alone the domestic players in the country’s booming Internet industry, many of which have dominant market share positions. But a major fine imposed this week on the U.S. chip maker Qualcomm may add pressure on regulators to consistently apply their scrutiny to domestic and foreign companies.

The merger will create a company with a combined market share well above 90 percent. That could also be bad news for Uber, the U.S. ride-sharing app, which cooperates with the Chinese search giant Baidu in the country.

But when Uber entered the Chinese market, Didi and Kuaidi were already dominant. More likely, Uber is positioning itself in China as more of a niche service, which could bring in handsome earnings even with a tiny share of the country’s enormous market.

滴滴+快的 兩大叫車App情人節合體

就在情人節當天，大陸前兩大叫車軟體公司「滴滴打車」與「快的打車」，宣布因財務與節省時間等成本原因，決定戰略合併；未來這家全球最大的叫車新公司採共同執行長制，並將早日上市，預估合併後市值可達六十億美元。

滴滴與快的兩家叫車（打車）公司計畫戰略合併，業界早有耳聞；昨天滴滴打車與快的打車聯合發布聲明，兩家實現戰略合併。

在合併後新公司運作上，將採共同執行長（Co-CEO）制度，滴滴打車執行長程維、快的打車執行長呂傳偉，將出任新公司的聯合執行長；未來兩家公司的人員架構保持不變，業務平行發展，並保留各自品牌和業務獨立性。

對此震撼大陸業界的戰略合併，程維昨寄發員工內部郵件解釋稱，一月廿一日，我、柳青在深圳啟動一個秘密專案：「情人節計畫」，目標在情人節前完成計畫；呂傳偉則透露說，合併是透過雙方合股方式完成，不涉及現金交易。

柳青是柳傳志之女，也是滴滴現任總裁。據程維透露，柳青將出任合併後新公司總裁，而各管理層團隊仍將掌握公司絕對控制權，此作為底線被所有投資者和兩家巨頭（騰訊和阿里巴巴）接受。

程維表示，此次合併創造三個紀錄，一是大陸網路歷史上最大併購案，二是最快創造一家大陸前十的網路公司，三是整合兩家巨頭（騰訊和阿里巴巴）的支持；未來六個月既有市場新挑戰又需內部整合。

呂傳偉昨也在內部郵件透露，除雙方在城市行動出行領域已建立共同願景外，主因是惡性燒錢的競爭不可持續，合併是雙方所有投資人共同的強烈期望，合併後可避免更大的時間和機會成本，新公司可加速開展新業務。

目前滴滴與快的共擁有一億七千多萬用戶，不過，雙方未透露此次戰略合併的持股比例和新公司估值；據華爾街日報報導，滴滴打車和快的打車合併後，估值或將達到六十億美元。

由於滴滴與快的市占率超過九成，在聯合壟斷問題上， 上海市交通委社會宣傳處副處長黃曉勇昨對澎湃新聞表示，合併是市場行為，管理部門只關心企業是否在法律框架內行事；一嗨租車董事長章瑞平認為，因市場足夠大，對租車市場影響有限。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/business/international/didi-dache-and-kuaidi-dache-chinas-top-taxi-hailing-apps-say-they-will-merge.html

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/business/20150215/c15chinataxi/zh-hant/

2015-02-15．聯合報．A12．兩岸．特派記者林克倫