Ftuan, GaoPeng create new company

Group-buying company Ftuan said on Wednesday it has formed a new company with GaoPeng, a sign that their parent company, Tencent Holdings Ltd, has finished the reintegration of its resources in the group-buying sector.

Tencent holds a 50 percent stake in Gaopeng and has an undisclosed stake in Ftuan. Lin Ning, former president of Ftuan, will take over the new company, which will be called Groupnet.

Both Ftuan and GaoPeng will operate independently, serving different customer group, Lin said.

Tencent's earlier estimations indicated that Groupnet will have about 10 percent of the market share in the industry.

Number of China's group buying websites continued to decline in the second quarter. Data from group-buying portal Tuan800 showed that 20 more websites have closed in June, making the total number of websites less than 3,000.