On October 25th local time in the United States, Alibaba Group announced that it has agreed to pay $433.5 million (approximately 3.087 billion yuan) to settle a class action lawsuit filed by investors in the United States.
The lawsuit accuses Alibaba of monopolistic behavior, but Alibaba denies any wrongdoing and emphasizes that the settlement is only to avoid the costs and interference of further litigation.
This proposed settlement agreement has been submitted to the Manhattan Federal Court and requires approval from U.S. District Judge George Daniels.
The settlement agreement covers investors who held Alibaba US stocks from November 13, 2019 to December 23, 2020. The plaintiff's lawyer stated in court documents that the proposed agreement is an "extraordinary achievement" that far exceeds the average compensation amount in securities class action cases where investors have suffered losses exceeding $10 billion.
The lawyer emphasized that if the lawsuit continues, Alibaba investors may receive up to $11.63 billion (approximately RMB 82.881 billion) in compensation.
Extended report:
On the afternoon of August 30th this year, the State Administration for Market Regulation announced that Alibaba Group had completed a three-year rectification and achieved good results.
The announcement stated that in April 2021, the State Administration for Market Regulation imposed administrative penalties on Alibaba Group Holding Limited (hereinafter referred to as Alibaba Group) for implementing a "two choice one" monopoly behavior in the online retail platform service market in China in accordance with the law, and provided administrative guidance, ordering it to stop illegal activities, conduct comprehensive self-examination and rectification, and submit self-examination compliance reports to the State Administration for Market Regulation for three consecutive years.
In the past three years, the State Administration for Market Regulation has strengthened its supervision of Alibaba Group's compliance rectification, conducted in-depth inspections of the implementation of rectification, and commissioned third-party institutions to conduct law enforcement effectiveness evaluations.
From the perspective of verification and evaluation, Alibaba Group has comprehensively stopped the "two choice one" monopoly behavior in accordance with the requirements of the "Administrative Penalty Decision" and "Administrative Guidance", strictly regulated its own business behavior, conscientiously implemented the platform's main responsibility, improved the enterprise compliance management system, improved the service level of merchants and consumers on the platform, achieved good results in compliance rectification work, improved the online retail market environment, effectively restored fair competition order, continuously expanded market development space, significantly improved competition vitality between platforms, and continuously optimized the quality of platform economic development and business environment.
Next, the State Administration for Market Regulation will guide Alibaba Group to continue regulating its operations, further improving compliance, quality, and efficiency, accelerating innovation driven development, continuously improving service levels, and providing solid guarantees for building a world-class enterprise and enhancing international competitiveness.