China-based Tencent Holdings saw its stock plunge so sharply that the company lost $62 billion in value. The loss in valuation, which occurred in Friday (March 12) and Monday (March 15) stock trading, may have wiped out most of the value of its online finance business, Bloomberg reported.
The sell-off in Tencent stock demonstrates investors’ concerns that it could be next on the list for Chinese regulators cracking down on the country’s homegrown Big Tech. A move against Tencent would mark a significant escalation in China’s campaign regarding the expansion of its technology giants. Concerns range from antitrust issues to loan operations.
“All else equal, we think it could be argued that Tencent’s FinTech business is now valued at almost zero,” Bernstein analysts wrote in a research report. Tencent stock fell more than 4 percent in Hong Kong on Monday, following a 4.4 percent drop on Friday, Bloomberg said.
Tencent’s business includes the popular WeChat Pay. The social media app WeChat itself performs a number of functions, including instant messaging.
Tencent and Baidu, another tech company, have been fined 500,000 yuan each for past acquisitions and investments they have made. The first target for Chinese regulators was Jack Ma’s Ant Group, which operates the popular payments app Alipay.
As reported last year, Ant had been gearing up for a massive initial public offering (IPO), slated to be worth an estimated $35 billion. The IPO attracted $3 trillion in bids and was on track to be the biggest in history. The listing was planned for both the Shanghai and Hong Kong exchanges.
Chinese regulators have been looking at payment services that may require that they be viewed more as a bank operation. In addition, antitrust investigations in China have been picking up steam, where Alibaba Group has been under scrutiny. And China’s Douyin is suing fellow internet titan Tencent over allegedly monopolistic behavior.
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