British ministers okay relocation of TikTok headquarters to London

ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, has announced the British ministers have approved the relocation of its headquarters to London.

The news media said that ByteDance’s founders were to announce their intention to set up shop in London soon, but the move was likely to upset US President Donald Trump who is not in support of TikTok use in the United States.

Efforts to immediately hear from TikTok for comment were unsuccessful.

Earlier report said the company’s senior executives had discussed options such as creating a new management board for TikTok or establishing a headquarters for the app outside of China to distance the application’s operations from China.

Meanwhile, in response to officials in several countries about whether TikTok shares user data with the Chinese government, the app has repeatedly denied receiving Chinese government requests from user data and it would not respond if asked.

Microsoft Corp said on Sunday that discussions were still ongoing to acquire popular short-video app TikTok from Chinese internet giant ByteDance, and it was targeting middle of September to conclude the negotiations.