Shares of the largest Chinese companies listed on US exchanges tanked by as much as 25% Monday after Chinese President Xi Jinping secured an unprecedented third term, as losses to the tune of over US$1 trillion continue to mount for the firms.
The Big Number: 75%. That’s how much the U.S. market cap of the 10 largest Chinese firms is down from their $1.6 trillion peak in February 2021, sitting at US$401 billion Monday.
“While Chinese politics have long been opaque, this sharp consolidation of power is adding to investor unease,” Mark Haefele, global chief investment officer at UBS, wrote in a Monday note to clients.
Xi retaining power over China and its ruling Communist Party over the weekend was “heavily expected,” but it still “hardly impressed financial markets,” OANDA analyst Edward Moya wrote Monday, and investors remain anxious about his government’s hawkish regulation of corporations and stringent Covid policies.
The Nasdaq Golden Dragon China Index hit its lowest level since 2013 Monday and is down nearly 80% since last spring. Chinese stocks listed stateside exploded in value early in the pandemic, but a flurry of headwinds, including escalating political tension between Washington and Beijing, Covid lockdowns far stricter than most other countries and crackdowns on industry, have since brought stocks tumbling back to earth.
Several major Chinese companies announced plans earlier this year to delist their stocks from New York exchanges as the firms refused to comply with American auditing requirements, but backed off the delisting plans in August after the U.S. and China came to terms on an agreement to provide regulators with additional accounting information.
Jack Ma, Alibaba’s billionaire cofounder and largest shareholder, lost $900 million Monday, sending his net worth down to $20.5 billion, according to our calculations. Ma’s fortune is less than half of what it was in early 2021.
This article was first published on forbes.com
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