CHINA
Tencent buys 15% of rival JD
Tencent, Asia’s largest internet company, had agreed to buy a 15 percent stake in Chinese e-commerce website JD.com to build a stronger competitor to Alibaba, a filing showed yesterday. Tencent would pay $214.7 million (R2.3bn) in cash and transfer its e-commerce businesses QQ Wanggou and Paipai and a minority stake in Yixun to JD.com, the filing showed. Tencent had also agreed to buy a further stake representing 5 percent of the company after it completed an initial public offering, it said. – Bloomberg
UK
Gatwick offers to pay noise fee
London’s Gatwick airport has proposed paying £1 000 (R17 900) a year in compensation to people affected by noise from a planned second runway as it seeks to get the go-ahead for expansion ahead of the city’s Heathrow hub. Gatwick would pay the sum as a contribution toward council tax, a levy that funds local services, for about 4 100 homes, it said in a statement. “Environmental issues are at the centre of the debate about runway capacity,” Gatwick chief executive Stewart Wingate said. “Noise reduction, mitigation and compensation are therefore at the heart of our expansion plans.” – Bloomberg
KENYA/UGANDA
Orange mulls scaling down
Orange was considering cutting its holdings in Kenya and Uganda, it said yesterday, potentially scaling back investments by the largest French cellular carrier in Africa. Its options for Uganda and Kenya included finding new financial or operational partners to help invest in phone networks and support the development of the carriers, Tom Wright, a spokesman for the Paris-based company, said in a statement. Orange owns 95 percent of Orange Uganda and and 70 percent of Telkom Kenya. Under chief executive Stephane Richard, Orange has sold assets in countries including Switzerland as competition hurts sales in France. – Bloomberg