Alibaba begins divesting stakes in its media empire amid crackdown - PingWest

Alibaba begins divesting stakes in its media empire amid crackdown

Alibaba begins divesting stakes in its media empire amid crackdown

September 24, 2021 11:05 pm

Alibaba is divesting its entire equity stake in a Chinese shopping and entertainment television network just nine months after it bought  them, which could cause an estimated loss of CNY2.3 billion for the Chinese e-commerce giant.

Detail:

According to a document filed with the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, Mango Excellent Media Corporation, the owner and operator of entertainment streaming platform Mango TV, said Alibaba will sell its entire holding of 5.1 percent stake that is equivalent to 93.6 million stakes of the company.

Mango Excellent Media also noted that Alibaba is seeking a waiver from an agreement not to sell the shares for a year. The e-commerce giant bought share of Mango last December at a price of CNY66.23 yuan per share via a transfer agreement.

Either Mango or Alibaba revealed any reason for Alibaba’s divestment. However, the divestment come at the time when Chinese officials are tightening control over the country’s tech sector to curb monopoly business practice and growing influence of tech giant and rapid expansion of capital.

Alibaba become the first target to be investigated by Chinese antitrust regulators since December last year. In April, Chinese market watchdog fined Alibaba with a record USD2.8 billion for engaging in the monopolistic practice of forcing online merchants to choose its marketplace as their exclusive distribution channel.

Context:

In addition to Mango, Alibaba also owns stake in various Chinese social media, including including microblogging platform Weibo, video-streaming site Bilibili and South China Morning Post, Hong Kong's leading English-language newspaper.

In July Reuters reported that Weibo was in talks to go private with the help of a Shanghai-based state-owned company, in an effort to help Alibaba divest. However, Weibo’s chairman, Charles Chao denied the rumor by saying “there is no such discussions for privatization.

SHARE