Innovative region: China
Take probably the best venture capital exit you can think of, such as say Meta (then known as Facebook’s) $22bn acquisition of social messaging application WhatsApp in 2014. It was a big win for Sequoia Capital, the company’s only venture investor, which turned its $60m investment into a reported $3bn.
Then multiply it. China-based gaming and internet group Tencent at the end of last year said it would pay a $16.4bn dividend in the stock of China’s second-biggest ecommerce group, JD.com, of which it is the largest shareholder.
This comes seven years after Tencent paid $214.7m in cash and transferred its e-commerce businesses QQ Wanggou and Paipai and a minority stake in Yixun to JD.com. Tencent took a 15% stake in JD.com at that time and also agreed to buy a further 5% at its May 2014 flotation on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
More importantly, JD formed a strategic partnership…
