China’s antitrust regulator unconditionally approved on Tuesday Tencent Holdings Ltd’s plan to take the country’s no.3 search engine Sogou Inc private in a $3.5 billion deal.
Tencent’s purchase of search engine developer Sogou was approved by the country’s anti-monopoly regulator, according to a statement on the website of the State Administration for Market Regulation.
The deal, announced in September, was for Tencent to buy the 60% of U.S.-listed Sogou that it didn’t already own, making it the latest Chinese company to exit U.S. markets amid tensions between the world’s two largest economies.