Alibaba sinks 18% in worst day ever after Chinese regulators open antitrust investigation
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- Alibaba suffered its worst trading day ever on Thursday after Chinese regulators opened an antitrust investigation into the e-commerce giant.
- Alibaba fell as much as 18% in Thursday trades, far outpacing its previous record one-day decline of nearly 9% in 2015.
- Watch Alibaba trade live here.
Alibaba suffered its worst one-day decline ever since going public in 2014 after Chinese regulators opened an antitrust investigation into the e-commerce giant.
Alibaba fell as much as 18%, far outpacing its previous record one-day decline of 8.8% in January 2015. The stock hit levels not seen since June.
The complaint centers arounds Alibaba's practice of forcing merchants to sign exclusivity contracts and only sell their products on Alibaba's e-commerce platform and not on competing platforms.
The investigation comes just one month after Chinese regulators abruptly halted the highly anticipated public debut of Ant Group, a fintech lending company founded by Jack Ma and partially owned by Alibaba.
That clamp-down on Ant Group came shortly after Ma made critical comments about China's banking rules.
In separate statements released Thursday, both Alibaba and Ant Group said they had been notified about the regulatory actions and would cooperate, per The Wall Street Journal.
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