Qunar could follow eLong's lead and go private

Chinese OTA Qunar has received a "going private" offer from a unit of Chinese travel investment specialists Ocean Imagination.

The offer of $10.12 per ordinary share is a 15% premium on the previous closing price. Qunar has a market cap of around $3.8 billion.

The offer comes from Ocean Management, "an entity related to Ocean Imagination". Ocean Imagination was part of the consortium which took eLong private earlier this year.

Ctrip and Tencent were also part of that group. Ctrip of course owns 45% of Qunar after the share swap with Baidu last year. However, it looks as if the current offer comes from Ocean on its own rather than a group of investors.

And Ocean says that it "intends to seek the support of the company's shareholders accounting for a majority in voting power for this proposal..."

As usual in these cases, Qunar has formed a committee to consider the non-binding proposal.

Click here to read the release.

Related reading from Tnooz: Ctrip invests in outbound; Qunar back in the air (June 2016) Ctrip and Tencent get their hands on eLong (Feb 2016) Pivotal moments 2015 – the Ctrip Baidu share swap (Dec 2015)