Starbucks stirs things up in China
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 4 November 2025
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From the BBC World Service: Starbucks is selling the majority stake of its business in China to investment firm Boyu Capital as part of a $4 billion deal. The global coffee brand hopes the funds will help kick-start growth in the face of growing local competition. Then, it's a big week for Tesla, as vote results are expected on Elon Musk's proposed $1 trillion pay package. But Norway's sovereign public wealth fund, a major investor, stated it's opposing the deal.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Starbucks stirs things up by selling a big stake of its business in China. |
| 0:06.0 | Live from the UK, this is the Marketplace Morning Report from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:10.2 | I'm William Lee Adams. Good morning. |
| 0:12.9 | Global coffee brand Starbucks is selling the majority stake in its business in China as part of a $4 billion deal. |
| 0:20.0 | Under the agreement, Chinese investment firm Boyu Capital |
| 0:23.1 | will acquire a 60% interest in Starbucks retail operations in the country. |
| 0:27.9 | Joining me on Marketplace to get into the details is the BBC's Surinjana Tohari, Surinjana Hi. |
| 0:34.0 | Hi there. So what do we know about this deal so far? |
| 0:41.7 | China is Starbucks's second largest market. |
| 0:45.7 | But it has been looking for a local partner since earlier this year. |
| 0:50.8 | And that's part of restructuring efforts by CEO Brian Nicol. |
| 0:55.8 | That's partly because of COVID that really hits sales, but also because there's been increased competition in the market with local brands like Luckin Coffee, which is China's |
| 1:00.8 | largest coffee maker. Starbucks will sell its controlling share of its retail operations in China |
| 1:08.0 | to a private equity firm, but it will retain 40% while continuing to own |
| 1:14.2 | and license the brand in the country. But it's still hugely lucrative for Starbucks. It's |
| 1:20.7 | said that the total value of its China business will be more than $13 billion under the New Deal. |
| 1:27.4 | And other big global brands have spun off operations in China in recent years, haven't they? |
| 1:32.6 | That's right. As competition really grows between the world's two largest economies, China and the US, |
| 1:38.7 | young brands, which runs KFC and Pizza Hut in China, spun off its local business in 2016, while Gap, Best Buy and Uber all exited the country after struggling to fend off homegrown rivals in a very crowded market. And one of the things that happens when there's a lot of competition is it pushes down prices, and that makes it almost unsustainable sometimes. |
| 2:03.2 | The other thing that foreign companies have said is that they've complained that operating in China |
| 2:08.3 | is becoming more of a challenge and China's still in an economic slowdown and that means |
| 2:14.0 | that people are looking for slightly cheaper alternatives. |
... |
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