Chinese regulators have hit top e-commerce giant Alibaba with a record 18.23 billion yuan ($2.78 billion) fine for violating anti-monopoly laws, it was announced on Saturday, April 10. The fine, the largest anti-monopoly fine ever rolled out by Chinese authorities, was imposed after an investigation revealed an “exclusive dealing agreement” that violated Chinese monopoly laws. The fine is equal to 4% of Alibaba’s sales in 2019, the Xinhua news agency said in a report on Saturday. The strongly worded statement said the company “abused” its dominant market position since 2015. Founded by China’s most famous entrepreneur, Jack Ma, once a schoolteacher who became a multi-billionaire, Alibaba is possibly the world’s biggest e-commerce company with hundreds of millions of users and billions of dollars in turnover – according to Bloomberg, it is Asia’s “most valuable corporation”. Its three main sites Taobao, Tmall and Alibaba.com host millions of merchants and businesses. But in December, China’s State Administration for Market Regulation started an investigation on Alibaba Group for alleged monopoly conduct including implementing an ‘exclusive dealing agreement’,” Xinhua, China’s official news agency, had then announced.
Tag: Jack Ma
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Jack Ma emerges for first time since crackdown on Ant and Alibaba
Alibaba and Ant co-founder Jack Ma has resurfaced after months out of public view, quashing intense speculation about the plight of the billionaire grappling with escalating scrutiny over his internet empire. China’s most recognizable entrepreneur addressed scores of teachers on an online conference Wednesday, part of an annual event the billionaire hosts to recognize the achievements of rural educators. His appearance, first reported in a local blog, was confirmed by people familiar with the matter. Ma’s re-emergence may help quell persistent rumors about his fate while Beijing pursues investigations into online finance titan Ant Group Co. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. The executive had kept out of public view since early November, when Chinese regulators torpedoed Ant’s $35 billion IPO, tightened fintech regulations, then ordered an overhaul of Ant and launched a separate antitrust probe into Alibaba — all in a span of days. The assault on Ma’s trillion-dollar corporate empire encapsulates a broader campaign to rein in a generation of Chinese tech giants that Beijing now views as wielding too much control over the world’s No. 2 economy. The flurry of actions against his twin companies drove home how Beijing has lost patience with the outsize power of its technology moguls, perceived now as a threat to the political and financial stability President Xi Jinping prizes most.