Photographer: Qilai Shen / Bloomberg
Photographer: Qilai Shen / Bloomberg
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. raised the stock repurchase program proposal to between $ 4 billion and $ 10 billion, providing more support for actions affected by extensive antitrust research on the country’s most powerful Internet corporations.
Its shares fell more than 5% in initial Hong Kong trading to a six-month low. China’s e-commerce leader said Monday it began buying shares this quarter and its board has authorized an increase in that program, which runs for two years until the end of 2022.
Once acclaimed as the standard-bearers of China’s economic and technological ancestry, Alibaba and its rivals like it Tencent Holdings Ltd. it is now facing increasing pressure from regulators concerned about the speed with which they are accumulating hundreds of millions of users and gaining influence over almost every aspect of daily life. Alibaba’s shares are down about 30% from the 2020 high, affected by the deepening scrutiny and denunciations of monopolistic practices to the jewel in the crown of the empire of billionaire Jack Ma.
Read more: Ant that goes from the unexpected to the nightmare for global investors
Beijing launched an antitrust investigation into Alibaba last week and sent officials to its Hangzhou headquarters, marking the formal start of the Communist Party’s crackdown on the company that made Ma the best-known businessman in the United States. country. On Sunday, Chinese regulators ordered Ma’s other online titan – Ant Group Co. – to return to its roots as a payment service provider, threatening to accelerate the growth of its most lucrative consumer lending and wealth management businesses.
Ma, the flamboyant co-founder of Alibaba and Ant, has disappeared from public view since Ant’s initial public offering derailed last month. In early December, the government advised the man most identified with China Inc.’s meteoric rise. to stay in the country, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Ma is not on the verge of a personal fall, connoisseurs of the situation have said. His public rebuke, on the other hand, is a warning that Beijing has lost patience with the enormous power of its technology moguls, increasingly perceived as a threat to the political and financial stability that President Xi Jinping most rewards.
Read more: Jack Ma stays calm after the spectacular undoing of Ant Group