Media are reporting that Internet giant Tencent (
0700.HK) is following close behind rival Alibaba with plans to launch an investment product that is quite unrelated to any of its core online businesses. The move by China's biggest publicly listed Internet firm comes as its market value reaches the psychologically important $100 billion (HK$775.4 billion) mark, making it more than twice as big as China's second largest telco, China Unicom (
0762.HK), and more than 10 times larger than leading PC maker Lenovo (
0992.HK). Its massive size and financial clout have emboldened the company to move outside its core areas into other businesses, some dominated by major state-run firms.
After years of intense competition in China's fragmented Internet space, Tencent and Alibaba have both suddenly broken out as the country's top two players, each with market values of about $100 billion (HK$775.4 billion). Both have used their growing clout to move into a wide range of different areas. Alibaba has been quite aggressive about growth through acquisitions, making several major purchases this year as it moves towards a multibillion-dollar IPO.
Tencent's has chosen to grow more organically by developing new businesses on its own or in partnership with other firms. That appears to be the case again, with word that the company is
set to launch a new service that allows users of its Tenpay e-payments service to invest their idle funds into other financial products. That plan looks remarkably similar to Alibaba's Yu E Bao service
launched earlier this year, which allows for similar investments from accounts on Alipay, Alibaba's own electronic payments service.
According to the reports, which cite unnamed industry insiders, Tencent will partner with 4 fund management companies to offer its new product, which will be released this month. Presumably investors will be given an array of investment choices, ranging from stock and bond funds to more conservative money market funds.
Tencent had reportedly considered an even more aggressive investment product that would have let users directly invest their salaries into financial markets, but in the end opted for the more conservative product linked to idle funds in Tenpay accounts. When Alibaba first
announced its Yu E Bao, I predicted there could be trouble ahead because many users wouldn't realize they could lose money by investing through the service. The same could be true for Tencent's new service, and I expect we'll see quite a few hiccups for both services in the year after their launch.
From a broader perspective, Alibaba's Yu E Bao launch and now Tenpay's similar service show these companies want to move into other areas now dominated by state-run firms, breathing some major new competition into those spaces. Tencent has already made a major
play into the telecoms space through its popular WeChat mobile messaging service, raising the ire of state-run industry titan China Mobile (
0941.HK; NYSE: CHL). Alibaba has been a source of similar controversy, raising the ire of major state-run banks and other financial services companies through its own moves into that space.
