Tencent has named Jeffrey Li and Forest Lin as co-heads of its merger and acquisition team as Asia’s largest internet company steps up its battle for consumers with Alibaba. Mr Li and Mr Lin will share the role of running the team, Tencent said on Wednesday. The men will replace Richard Peng, who is departing to set up his own fund.
Tencent became the most acquisitive Chinese company under Mr Peng’s stewardship by participating in at least 90 deals with a value of more than $19bn, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That surpassed the number of investments by the most active venture capital firms in the country, including Sequoia Capital and Qiming Venture Partners, during the same period, the data showed.
Mr Li has worked with Tencent since 2011, previously looking after investment at Bertelsmann SE following stints at Google, Nokia and Procter & Gamble. Mr Lin joined Tencent in 2010 after seven years at Microsoft, according to his profile on LinkedIn.
Tencent has evolved from a focus on desktop messaging through QQ to WeChat, the Twitter-like service that has grown into a mobile ecosystem providing banking, commerce and other services in competition with Alibaba. Tencent also invested in Riot Games, Pocket Gems and Glu Mobile, maker of a popular smartphone game based on Kim Kardashian.
