Compliance Corner: Tencent, Alibaba, SAMR

Editorial Staff

11 July 2022

SAMR, Alibaba, Tencent
have been fined for breaching anti-monopoly rules.

The groups, along with a number of other firms, have been punished by The State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), the regulator is reported (Reuters, 10 July) to have said. SAMR released a list of 28 deals that violated the rules. Five involved units of Alibaba, including a 2021 purchase of equity in its subsidiary, the Youku Tudou streaming platform. Tencent was involved in 12 of the transactions on SAMR's list.

Reuters said the firms could not immediately be reached for comment.

Authorities in Beijing have been cracking down on down on supposedly bad practices in China's tech sector, along with other business areas such as after-hours private education, coming as a surprise to international investors and prompting concerns from renowned investors such as George Soros. At the same time, anti-monopoly actions are also common in the US and European Union (the EU, for example, has gone after big techs such as Google). See another example of regulatory controversies, here.

An affiliate of Alibaba, Ant Group, which provides financial services to the Chinese market including wealth management, has partnered with Vanguard, the giant US asset management house.