(Reuters) - Twitter Inc has approached TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance to express interest in acquiring the U.S. operations of the video-sharing app, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters, as experts raised doubts over Twitter's ability to put together financing for a potential deal. It is far from certain that Twitter would be able to outbid Microsoft Corp and complete such a transformative deal in the 45 days that U.S. President Donald Trump has given ByteDance to agree to a sale, the sources said on Saturday. The news of Twitter and TikTok being in preliminary talks and Microsoft still being seen as the front-runner in bidding for the app's U.S. operations was reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal. Twitter has a market capitalization of close to $30 billion, almost as much as the valuation of TikTok's assets to be divested, and would need to raise additional capital to fund the deal, according to the sources.

Source: Wall Street Journal August 08, 2020 23:57 UTC