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Beijing/Sunnyvale,Calif., September 25, 2001--Sina.com(Nasdaq:SINA), a leading Chinese media and Internet services company, and Sun Television Cybernetworks Holdings Limited(Sun TV: HKSE:0307), today announced in Beijing at a news conference their joint efforts in building up the biggest broadband portal and multi-media platform in China. It marks a new era of multi-media cooperation in China. The senior management of both Sina.com and Sun TV were present at the conference.
It is announced at the conference that SINA will acquire 29% of Sun TV's outstanding shares with US$ 8 million in cash and 4.6 million in newly issued SINA shares, thus becoming the biggest shareholder of Sun TV. At the same time, Yang Lan, Chairperson of Sun TV, will get 10% of SINA shares, which is expected to increase to 16% based on future performance of Sun TV over the next 18 months. Yang Lan will then become the biggest shareholder of SINA. After this strategic consolidation, Daniel Jiang, Chairman of the Board of SINA, and Bruno Wu, Executive Chairman and CEO of Sun TV, will work as Co-Chairmen of the Board of SINA. Daniel Mao and Wang Yan will continue to serve as CEO and president of SINA respectively. Yang Lan will continue to serve as Chairperson of Sun TV. Sina.com is the world biggest Chinese portal site, while Sun TV is a leading Greater China-wide Satellite TV broadcaster and a Cable TV program syndicator. The combination of the two companies, according to their leaders, represents the mainstream of future developments of the media industry, that is, the combination of Television and Internet, especially at the time of rapid growth of China's broadband infrastructure. The combined management of the two companies will help to expand the operational scales, so as to achieve greater efficiency in both operations and marketing, and to take better advantage of the two. Both SINA and Sun TV believe that, consumers are the one who will benefit most from this combination. For ordinary users, this co-operation breaks through the single way of information expression of either the traditional media or the Internet, endowing them with rich information resources and multiple choices of information channels. It also allows them to enjoy human care while getting timely news. To advertisers, the joint marketing and promotion can improve the relatively simple selling methods and enable them to enjoy a large scale of promotion with lower costs. Take advantage of the success of both brands, advertisers can enrich the value of their own brand and achieve better returns. SINA and Sun TV, the water and the sunshine, will together create a new multi-media group and vitalize the domestic media market. The new group will certainly bring SINA and Sun TV into thousands of households. About SINA.com SINA.com is a leading Chinese media and Internet services company for Chinese communities worldwide, offering on-line news, entertainment, community and e-commerce. A popular destination site for the world's largest population group, SINA.com offers a Chinese-language network of four localized Web sites that are produced and updated daily by local teams in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and North America. As of June 2001, SINA.com enjoyed 2.6 billion page views and 29 million registered users. To learn more about SINA.com, visit the company's corporate site at http://www.sina.com/corp/, or regional sites at http://www.sina.com, http://www.sina.com.cn, http://sina.com.hk and http://www.sina.com.tw. About Sun TV Sun TV is a publicly listed company on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKSE:0307). It is a leading Greater China Wide Satellite TV broadcaster and a Cable TV program syndicator. It has the right to operate two satellite TV channels with restricted landing rights issued by the PRC Government. Additionally, it broadcasts to 500,000 households in Hong Kong via Channel 21 on iCable TV and 4 million cable TV households in Taiwan through the Knowledge Channel. Additionally, Sun TV is a leading producer of high quality cultural and information-related thematic programs. To date, it has the access to a content library of over 45,000 hours. It has an exclusive license from A&E Channels for Greater China, as well as the exclusive management rights to pay-TV licenses for PRC from major TV content providers such as Discovery, MTV, StarzEncore and others. It is also the producer of a popular talk show series- Yang Lan Studio. Sun TV is also a leading innovator of broadband/ interactive TV technology. For more information please visit Sun TV's Corporate website at http://www.chinasuntv.com |