Antitrust Fine Imposed, Chinese Tech Stocks Plunge... Alibaba Down 5.8%

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Min-young] On the 10th, Chinese authorities announced the imposition of antitrust fines related to merger procedures, causing Chinese tech stocks to plummet on the 11th.

On the 11th, the Hang Seng Tech Index, which tracks the stock performance of major Chinese tech companies such as Tencent and Alibaba on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, closed down sharply by 3.86%.

With the two leading stocks Alibaba and Tencent falling 5.79% and 2.89% respectively, other tech stocks such as Meituan (-5.56%), Kuaishou (-5.08%), JD.com (-4.40%), and Xiaomi (-4.31%) also declined. On that day, Alibaba's stock price dropped more than 7% intraday, and Tencent's also fell more than 3% intraday.

The State Administration for Market Regulation, an antitrust agency, announced the previous day that it had belatedly raised issues with a total of 28 merger procedures, including 12 cases involving Tencent and 5 involving Alibaba, imposing cumulative fines of 500,000 yuan each?the maximum limit stipulated by the antitrust law?equivalent to about 100 million Korean won per case.

Regarding this, Bloomberg commented, "This shows how vulnerable investor sentiment is despite signs of regulatory easing on China's big tech companies," adding, "The decline in Chinese stocks also widened amid news of a resurgence of COVID-19 in China."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.