Within two days of the IPO, six regulatory agencies were sent in to conduct their investigations on issues including customer data protection, cyber security compliance. Its stock price declined 12% from its IPO price over two weeks.
When Ant Financial’s IPO was cancelled in November, investors dismissed it as a personal punishment meted out to Jack Ma for criticising the regulators and the system. Alibaba stock declined less than 10% over two weeks.
When the antitrust department summoned the Internet and e-commerce companies for afternoon tea almost every week from November and warned them about anti-competitive practices and other misdeeds, investors largely ignored that. When Didi Global ignored the cyber security regulator’s urging to delay its IPO, investors enthusiastically took up all the shares on offer.
