SINANET.com partners include: Excite (NASDAQ:XCIT), Dow Jones,
E-Trade (NASDAQ:EGRP), Data Broadcasting Corp. (NASDAQ:DBCC),
Briefing.com and AboveNet Communications, Inc.
SINANET.com and Beijing Company SRS to Create World's Largest Chinese Internet Portal; New Company Will Have More Than Twice the Viewership of Yahoo! Chinese
BusinessWire, Monday, December 07, 1998 at 08:19
CUPERTINO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 7, 1998--SINANET.com, a
premier Internet portal for Chinese users worldwide based in
Cupertino, Calif. and Taiwan, and Stone Rich Sight Information
Technology Co. Ltd. (SRS) a Beijing-based software developer and
Internet services company, have announced they will merge to create
the world's largest Chinese Internet portal.
SINANET.com, which is a leading web site for Taiwanese and N.
American Chinese, and SRS, which has the largest Internet portal in
China, will combine management teams and staffs to create a new
venture called SINA, Inc. Together, the two companies already boast a
viewership of about 65 million page views per month -- more than twice
the number of users as the closest competitor, Yahoo!
Chinese.(NASDAQ:YHOO)
SINA, Inc. will provide news, information, financial services,
entertainment, educational and job opportunities, and web services,
including e-mail, searching capabilities, e-commerce and chat rooms to
Chinese users worldwide. It will have a combined staff of 220 in
Beijing, Taiwan and Cupertino. Revenues will be generated through
advertising, sponsorships and electronic commerce opportunities.
SINA, Inc. will operate three distinct and major Internet
portals: www.sina.com serving N. America, www.sina.com.cn for China
and www.sina.com.tw for Taiwan. Additional sites will be developed for
other regions in Asia. Each local property will focus primarily on
content and services attractive and appropriate to the local area it
serves.
In addition to its strong Internet presence, SRS brings extensive
experience in developing software applications for enhancing the web
experience for Chinese users. This engineering strength will give
SINA, Inc. a key advantage in leading the development of new
interactive web services and electronic commerce for the global
Chinese market, according to Wang Zhidong, president of SRS.
"With SRS's strength in China, and SINANET.com's well-established
leadership in Taiwan and North America, SINA, Inc. will truly be the
only company that has the geographic reach and resources to reach all
Chinese users worldwide," said Wang.
"Chinese users will benefit from the strength of a global company
that has the resources to localize web content and services and
deliver much-needed Internet services. And multi-national companies
will have a powerful way to communicate with the largest emerging
Internet market in the world -- global Chinese," said Daniel Chiang,
president and CEO of SINANET.com.
"The combination of SINANET.com and SRS is positioned to be the
leading Chinese-language internet portal, which represents a very
large market opportunity, in our view. This market presents inherent
challenges, against which we believe each company has already made
great progress," said Keith Benjamin, managing director and senior
Internet analyst at BancBoston Robertson Stephens.
"As a major investor in the merged company, we believe this
marriage of two strong companies with complementary skills and market
presence creates tremendous synergies and value, which would be
difficult for any single competitor to replicate," said Daniel Mao of
Walden International Investment Group.
Details of the Merger and Management Team
SINANET.com and SRS are both privately held. SRS will issue new
shares in exchange for shares in SINANET.com when the merger is
completed.
SINA, Inc. will be headquartered in Cupertino, Calif., with
operations in Beijing and Taiwan. Wang Zhidong will become president
of SINA, Inc. Daniel Chiang will become CEO. Mark Fagan, currently CFO
of SRS, will be CFO of SINA, Inc.
About SRS
SRS is a Chinese software development and Internet services
company that specializes in creating ways for Chinese computer users
to communicate more effectively and work more productively.
Through its popular line of utility enhancement software
products, RichWin, SRS enables PC users to create a Chinese-enabled
environment allowing users to input, format and output Chinese
characters within standard English-language versions of software
applications such as Microsoft Word.
PC World magazine awarded RichWin the "Best Buy" prize in the
software package category in 1996 and selected it as "Best Chinese
Enabling Operating System" in 1997.
SRS' RichWin software has an installed base of approximately four
million users.
SRS's corporate and government customers include Pepsico, Nike,
Northern Telecom, McKinsey & Co. KPMG, the government of Macau, Bank
of China, Hong Kong Telecom and Singapore Newspaper Holdings, Inc.
SRS was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Beijing's
Zhongguancun high technology development zone.
SRS's web site www.srsnet.com, which offers financial and general
news, sports reports, e-mail, chat rooms and a search engine, is the
most popular in China.
About SINANET.com
SINANET.com, one of the largest Chinese web sites in the world,
offers the latest in Chinese news and information, on-line shopping,
job listings, chat rooms, as well as free web e-mail and a powerful
Chinese/English search engine.
SINANET.com uses proprietary technology to enable Chinese users
to read both traditional and simplified characters on-screen without
special software or a Chinese operating system.
SINANET.com partners include: Excite (NASDAQ:XCIT), Dow Jones,
E-Trade (NASDAQ:EGRP), Data Broadcasting Corp. (NASDAQ:DBCC),
Briefing.com and AboveNet Communications, Inc.
SINANET.com was founded in 1995 and is based in Cupertino, Calif.
and Taiwan. To learn more about SINANET.com please visit the
English-language web pages under "About SINANET.com." at
www.sinanet.com.
CONTACT: SINANET.com
Teresa Wang, 408/873-2882 ext. 322
teresa@staff.sinanet.com
or
SRS
Mark Fagan, 408/529-3919
mark@richsight.com
KEYWORD: CALIFORNIA
INDUSTRY KEYWORD: COMPUTERS/ELECTRONICS COMED
INTERACTIVE/MULTIMEDIA/INTERNET PRODUCT MERGERS/ACQ
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