LeEco announced in the summer last year that it was going to acquire TV maker Vizio for $2 billion. Reports at that time suggested that the two companies had been negotiating for almost two years before they reached an agreement. Not a lot of progress has been made on the matter since then and LeEco today announced that it’s not going to proceed with the Vizio acquisition.
There have been countless reports recently telling us about the financial troubles that LeEco has been going through. It was believed that this might impact the planned Vizion acquisition as well. The last we heard, the LeEco acquisition of Vizio had been stalled with one of the reasons claimed to be restrictions in China on the movement of capital.
LeEco Global Group Ltd. and VIZIO Inc. today announced that the merger agreement to acquire Vizio is not going to proceed “due to regulatory headwinds.” No mention is made to the reported financial troubles in the official press release.
If further mentions that there exists a great synergy between the two companies and therefore they have decided on a “collaborative partnership” instead.
The partnership will see LeEco and Vizio explore opportunities to incorporate the Le app and content into Vizio’s connected CE platform as well as leverage LeEco’s EUI platform, its exclusive content and distribution channels to bring Vizio’s products to the Chinese market.