SAMR Fines Tencent, Alibaba and Others under China's Anti-monopoly Law

China's SAMR (State Admnistration for Market Regulation) has fined Alibaba, Tencent, SoftBank, Didi Global and other firms for failing to properly reporting past transactions, which is a breach of the agency's anti-monopoly rules.

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On Sunday (July 10), SAMR released a list of 28 deals that violated rules on declaring when a business operator obtains control over another participant in the same area, which may lead to a monopoly.

For each case, SAMR imposed a CNY 500,000 (USD 75,000) against the company involved – the maximum allowed under China's anti-monopoly law.

Tencent was fined CNY 6 million for its involvement in 12 of the transactions on the list, including its acquisition of a 20 percent stake in shoe-selling website Okaybuy (China) Holding Inc.

Alibaba was fined CNY 2.5 million for its involvement in five transactions on the list, including a 2021 purchase of equity in streaming platform Youku Tudou, and its acquisitions of logistics provider Best Inc and Yicai Media Group.

Didi and its subsidiaries were involved in four other transactions, video site Bilibili in three, social media operator Weibo in one, and private equity firm Citic Capital in one.

A joint venture between health tech company Ping An Good Doctor and Japanese conglomerate SoftBank was also on the list.

Both Alibaba and Tencent were penalised for similar violations in November. Last April, Alibaba was also handed a record CNY 18.3 billion penalty for abusing its market dominance.

Last month, amendments to the country's anti-monopoly law were adopted that will increase the penalties for failing to report M&A to regulators to a maximum CNY 5 million fine if the failure does not harm competition, and up to 10 percent of the offender's previous year's revenue if competition is harmed.