The Penguin is ready for the Dive

Pony Ma, the man at the helm of Tencent, the biggest Internet company in China, admitted in a recent interview that his company has plans to expand its overseas presence through mergers and acquisitions.

If reports are to be believed, Tencent’s first target would be Activision Blizzard, the gaming giant. While nothing substantial has resulted from all the talks, it is believed that Tencent is one of the cash rich companies being sounded out by Vivendi, the French media-to-telecoms conglomerate that owns a controlling stake in Activision Blizzard.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. In China, achieve growth through buying seems to be the trend of the future. All the big companies do it, and Tencent is the biggest company to come out of China. Yet for Tencent and the Chinese Internet industry, this is still gigantic news. To paraphrase Neil Armstrong, this may be a small step for Tencent, but it is a giant step for the Chinese Internet industry.

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