Photographer: Qilai Shen / Bloomberg
Photographer: Qilai Shen / Bloomberg
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. raised a proposed share buyback program by $ 4 billion to $ 10 billion, offering more support for stocks hampered by an ever-growing antitrust investigation at the country’s most powerful internet companies.
Its shares fell more than 5% at the start of the Hong Kong trading session, to a six-month low. China’s e-commerce leader He said Monday that he began to buy back shares this quarter and his board authorized an increase in that program, which will remain in effect for two years until the end of 2022.
Formerly hailed as the standard bearers of China’s economic and technological rise, Alibaba and rivals such as Tencent Holdings Ltd. now faces increasing pressure from regulators concerned with the speed with which they are accumulating hundreds of millions of users and gaining influence over almost every aspect of daily life. Alibaba’s stock fell about 30% from its peak in 2020, hampered by deepening scrutiny and allegations of monopoly practices in the crown jewel of billionaire Jack Ma’s empire.
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Beijing opened an antitrust investigation into Alibaba last week and dispatched officials to its headquarters in Hangzhou, marking the formal start of the Communist Party’s crackdown on the company that made Ma the country’s best-known businessman. On Sunday, Chinese regulators ordered another titan online from Ma – Ant Group Co. – to return to its roots as a payment service provider, threatening to restrict the growth of its most profitable consumer loan and wealth management businesses.
Ma, the extravagant co-founder of Alibaba and Ant, has almost disappeared from public view since Ant’s initial public offering derailed last month. In early December, the man most identified with the meteoric rise of China Inc. was advised by the government to stay in the country, a person familiar with the matter said.
Mom is not on the verge of a personal fall, said those who know the situation. His public rebuke is, instead, a warning that Beijing has lost patience with the extraordinary power of its tech magnates, increasingly perceived as a threat to the political and financial stability that President Xi Jinping most values.
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