China's very own antitrust watchdog has recently launched a probe into the tech giant known as Alibaba Group over certain alleged anti-competitive practices. The official State Administration of Market Regulations has recently kicked off the investigations into the known Alibaba Group claiming that the company has actually been involved in certain monopolistic conduct.
Alibaba met with fines
The allegations say that the company had forced exclusivity as it had required certain e-commerce merchants to pick only a single platform as their main exclusive distribution channel. This was according to a report made by the South China Morning Post. The statement noted that Alibaba said that the company would cooperate along with the regulators on the particular investigation. The statement then added that the company's very own business operations will still remain normal.
Just last month, the State Administration for Market Regulations had just slapped Alibaba as well as the Tencent-backed Ghina Literature with certain fines for the company failing to properly report its past acquisitions deal to gain clearance. Both Alibaba and China Literature were fined 500,000 yuan each or just $76,464 which is the maximum amount under the official anti-monopoly law back in 2008 according to Reuters.
Alibaba's acquisitions
The story was reported by ZDNet and it talks about the official acquisition deals that Alibaba were basically fined for which included its massive $692 million investment in the company Intime back in 2014 as well as the e-commerce giant's whopping $2.6 billion bid back in 2017 to privatise Intime, according to the report. Meanwhile, the official China Literature was given a fine for failing to report its previous 2018 New Classics Media acquisition.
Separately, the official Alibaba's finance services arm called Ant Group, the main owner of Alipay, has just been summoned by China's official central bank in order to meet along with financial regulators for the company to discuss its regulatory compliance, according to SCMP. Ant Group gave an official statement noting that they have received the meeting notice from their regulators and that they will seriously study and also strictly comply with the regulatory requirements. They will also commit their full efforts to be able to fulfill the required related work.
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Jack Ma's speech
Back in November, the Chinese regulators actually called off Ant Group's previous IPO after concluding that the listing on the official Shanghai stock exchange might have no longer met the required regulatory as well as disclosure requirements due to certain "changes" along with the fintech environment. This has then prompted Ant Group to make a move and also suspend the company's Hong Kong listing.
The whole crackdown of Alibaba Group's general operations by the Chinese regulators actually follows the group's founder, Jack Ma's speech that he gave back during the Bund summit in Shanghai back in october. This was where he actually criticised the country's very own overbearing regulations and even the state's dominance over the whole banking system. The transcript was uploaded by TheAsset.
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Written by Urian Buenconsejo
