TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer Quits, Says US Push For A Sale Drove Decision

TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer said in an internal memo that he is resigning as the head of the short-form video app, the Financial Times reported Thursday.

What Happened: Mayer, a former executive at Walt Disney Co DIS, made the decision to leave TikTok after President Donald Trump ordered a ban on the ByteDance owned app unless it transferred ownership to an American company in the span of 90 days, according to FT’s unnamed sources.

The chief executive reportedly revealed his decision to quit in a letter to employees and said that Vanessa Pappas, general manager of TikTok will lead the platform.

“I understand that the role that I signed up for — including running TikTok globally — will look very different as a result of the US administration's action to push for a sell off of the US business,” the outgoing CEO wrote in the letter, as per FT.

Why It Matters: Trump signed an executive order earlier this month that would effectively stifle TikTok's operations in the United States, unless parent company ByteDance makes a sale within 45 days of signing the order. The president accused the company of siphoning off “vast swaths of information” from its users, and doing the biddings of the Chinese Communist Party.

Oracle Corporation ORCL, Microsoft Corporation MSFT, and Twitter Inc TWTR are reported to be in the race to acquire TikTok’s operations in the U.S. and several other countries. 

ByteDance investors Sequoia and General Atlantic are lending support to Oracle’s bid, with the hope of getting to be a part of the action, FT reported earlier.