China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) has fined tech giants 43 times – with Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent told to pay up for failing to declare deals deemed to violate anti-monopoly legislation.
According to SAMR, more rigorous anti-monopoly law enforcement has seen businesses file more paperwork, sometimes about past transactions. SAMR’s own probes have spotted acquisitions that weren’t reported at the time.
Those efforts turned up 43 transactions, conducted between 2012 and 2021, that violated China’s 2008 Anti-Monopoly Law. Each count received a fine of ¥500,000 ($78,300). The regulatory body said that all were “assessed as having no effect of excluding or restricting competition”.
The market regulator posted about the fines on its WeChat account and Weibo page on Saturday.
State-sponsored media Global Times reported that Alibaba and Tencent each racked up more than ten cases.
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China’s national anti-monopoly bureau was inaugurated on Thursday and guidelines for antitrust compliance of enterprises abroad were issued the same day.
The government in Beijing, and SAMR in particular, has been busy. Earlier this month the organization drafted new rules for internet platforms considered “super large” that hold them to higher standards than smaller, less influential ones in an attempt to stamp out anticompetitive behavior.
In September, the org ordered Alibaba, Tencent and more to stop blocking links to rivals. And it has been known to step in and outright ban mergers it deems imprudent.
[…]
Source: Beijing issues fines for 43 Big Tech M&A deals • The Register
It’s odd that China is leading the way in anti-monopolistic behaviour whilst the EU and US are lagging behind severely.
Robin Edgar
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