China continues to take a tougher stance on the country’s home-grown tech firms after intervening to halt Ant Group’s giant IPO last month.
While the penalties are small, Alibaba (NYSE:BABA), Tencent-backed China Literature (OTCPK:TCEHY), and Shenzhen Hive Box Technology were each fined 500,000 yuan ($76,463) by the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) for not making the proper declarations to authorities about past acquisitions.
The SAMR also recently published draft rules looking to stop monopolistic practices by internet platforms in one of the most wide-sweeping proposals in China to regulate large tech companies.
Many of the businesses have grown largely unencumbered over the last few years, becoming ingrained in all aspects of everyday life in China.
BABA -1.4% premarket
Extending the remote work period for most of its staff due to the coronavirus pandemic, Google (GOOG, GOOGL) has pushed back the planned return to the office by a few months, to September 2021, NYT reports.
More importantly, the tech giant is laying out a “series of proposed changes that may substantially alter how its employees and people at other technology companies will work.”
In an email to the staff on Sunday night, CEO Sundar Pichai said the company will test the idea of a “flexible workweek” once it is safe to return to the office.
Under the pilot plan, employees would be expected to work at least three days a week in the office for “collaboration days” while working from home the other days.
“We are testing a hypothesis that a flexible work model will lead to greater productivity, collaboration, and well-being. No company at our scale has ever created a fully hybrid work force model – though a few are starting to test it – so it will be interesting to try.”
Nio (NYSE:NIO) has priced its offering of 68M ADSs, each representing one Class A ordinary share at $39.00/ADS.
Underwriters’ over-allotment is an additional 10.2M ADSs.
Net proceeds will be used for research and development of new products and next generations of autonomous driving technologies, sales and service network expansion and market penetration and general corporate purposes.
Shares down 6% premarket.
The stock is up more than 600% in the past six months.
Update: Google says on its status page at 7:47 a.m. ET: “Gmail service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change. The affected users are unable to access Gmail.”
Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) is seeing widespread outages of services this morning.
Users are having problems accessing services like Gmail, Google Assistant and watching videos on YouTube, according to Downdetector.
The problems with Gmail started at 6:40 a.m. ET, The Verge reports.
Google now notes on its status page: “We’re aware of a problem with Gmail affecting a majority of users. The affected users are unable to access Gmail. We will provide an update by 14/12/2020 07:12 detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change.”
Shares -0.1% premarket and are up 17% in the last three months.
China’s State Administration for Market Regulation says it’s reviewing the proposed acquisition of DouYu (NASDAQ:DOYU) by Huya (NYSE:HUYA).
A Huya spokesperson tells Bloomberg the company has applied to the regulator for a review and will cooperate with the process.
Tencent (OTCPK:TCEHY,OTCPK:TCTZF) is a stakeholder in both companies and would hold 68% of the combined entity’s voting power.
The regulator also announced hitting a Tencent affiliate and Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) $76,500 each over failures to disclose past acquisitions. The fines are small but represent SAMR’s growing crackdown on the tech industry.
In October, Huya and DouYu had announced the deal was expected to close in H1 2021.
HUYA ADRs are down 2.7% pre-market and DOYU is down 1.6%. Alibaba is down 1.6%.
