Doug Young

Corporate China | Rocky marriage ahead for Sohu, Tencent

The tie-up between Sohu's Sogou search engine and Tencent is likely to end in divorce in the next one or two years due to personality clashes.

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Sohu has finally selected Tencent as the winning suitor of its Sogou search engine, beating out rivals Baidu and Qihoo. Photo: AFP

Doug Young

Published: 9:58am, 17 Sep 2013Updated: 9:59am, 17 Sep 2013

Thank goodness! That's my first and main reaction to news that after months of tortured courtship, Sohu (Nasdaq: SOHU) has finally selected Tencent (0700.HK) as the winning suitor of its Sogou search engine, beating out rivals Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) and Qihoo (NYSE: QIHU). I have to admit the selection of Tencent came as a bit of a surprise, since I had expected Qihoo to win the contest for one of China's older and less appreciated search engines.

Now that the knot is finally tied in this somewhat unlikely marriage, the real work will begin as Tencent is forced to work with the opinionated and sometimes difficult Sohu chief Charles Zhang. Success in the years ahead is far from guaranteed, and I could even see this new marriage ultimately ending in divorce due to personality clashes. Such a divorce wouldn't be the first for Sogou, which saw previous strategic investor Alibaba dump its 10 per cent stake in the search engine a year ago.

All that said, let's take a closer look at this newly announced marriage, which comes four months after word news first emerged that Sohu was looking to sell some or all of Sogou. The new tie-up will see Tencent purchase 36.5 per cent of Sogou for $448 million (HK$3.47 billion), valuing Sogou at about $1.2 billion (HK$9.3 billion) -- about half of Sohu's current market value. Sohu shares shot up 7.5 per cent to near a two year high after the announcement, and have rallied sharply in general since the company first disclosed its plans to sell some or all of Sogou.

The deal will see the two companies merge Sogou with Soso, Tencent's own search engine that has struggled to find an audience. Sogou's current CEO Wang Xiaochuan will continue at the helm of the new company, though he will be overseen by Charles Zhang, who will be Sogou's chairman. Wang will also have new bosses in the form of Tencent's President Martin Lau and its COO Mark Ren, who will both join Sogou's board.

The final valuation for Sogou is about the same as the $1.2 billion (HK$9.3 billion) to $1.4 billion (HK$10.86 billion) that Qihoo was prepared to pay when it was reportedly on the cusp of a deal to buy all of Sogou back in July. That deal must have collapsed, probably because Zhang didn't want to yield control of Sogou to Qihoo, which has an equally opinionated chief in the outspoken Zhou Hongyi.

Following the Tencent deal, Zhou Hongyi actually congratulated Zhang on getting a good price, and wished him and Sogou success. Zhou was hoping to purchase Sogou to combine its 10 per cent share of China's search market with Qihoo's So.com search engine, which controls nearly 20 per cent of the market just a year after its launch.