CFIUS rules on MoneyGram

As I said in August, the financial interests of China are not the financial interests of the US.  CFIUS has gotten this right and turned down the sale of MoneyGram to Ant Financial, a spinoff of Alibaba. This is, if nothing else, reciprocity for what China did to Yahoo when it pulled Alipay from Alibaba without telling them anything about it.  They didn’t tell Yahoo, one of their principle owners, for seven months.

So, in the same circumstances i.e. the financial payments business, the Chinese expect us to allow the sale in the U.S. to a Chinese company.  Not happening.  This took awhile as the Reuters article tells it, going back three times for additional reviews.  Each time, the Chinese added restrictions that they thought would make the deal favorable to the reviewers.  For all the right reasons, the US did not allow that to happen.  The Chinese make all kinds of agreements, then blow them off when they refuse to implement them.  They make their own interpretations of the agreements, and they seldom even reference the original print of an agreement.

The stated reason for the refusal was the loan programs to military members who might be compromised by having their business interests held by the Chinese.  That, by the way, was exactly the same reason the Chinese said they forced the sale of Alibaba’s Alipay.  Justice may take some time, in this case, but it is justice none-the-less.