China group-buy firms agree to merge: Bloomberg

A pair of Chinese firms backed by Internet giants Alibaba and Tencent will merge into a USD 15 billion provider of online services including movie and restaurant reservations, Bloomberg News reported today.
The merger between Meituan.Com and Dianping Holdings could be announced as early as Thursday, Bloomberg cited sources close to the deal as saying.
Meituan is partially-owned by e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group Holding, while Dianping is backed by its Internet rival Tencent.
Meituan is the leading enterprise in China's "group buying" market with a near 52 percent share in the first six months of this year, the report said, while Dianping accounts for nearly 30 per cent.

"The two companies merging would allow them to have absolute dominance of the group-buying market," Wang Weidong, an analyst at Internet consultancy IResearch in Beijing, told Bloomberg.