Alibaba agrees to a 3 billion yuan settlement! But denies any allegations!

On October 25th, local time in the United States, Alibaba Group announced that it has agreed to pay $433.5 million (approximately RMB 30.87 billion) to settle a class action lawsuit filed by investors in the United States.

The lawsuit accused Alibaba of monopoly behavior, but Alibaba denied any wrongdoing and emphasized that the settlement was only to avoid the costs and disruptions 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's U.S. stocks between November 13, 2019, and December 23, 2020. Plaintiffs' lawyers described the proposed agreement as "an extraordinary outcome," far exceeding the average compensation amount in similar securities class action lawsuits where investors suffered losses exceeding $10 billion.

The lawyers emphasized that if the litigation were to continue, Alibaba investors could potentially receive up to $11.63 billion (approximately RMB 82.881 billion) in compensation.

Further reports:

On the afternoon of August 30th this year, the State Administration for Market Regulation announced that Alibaba Group has completed a three-year rectification with good results.

The announcement stated that in April 2021, the State Administration for Market Regulation lawfully imposed administrative penalties and conducted administrative guidance on Alibaba Group Holding Limited (hereinafter referred to as Alibaba Group) for its "choose one out of two" monopoly behavior in the online retail platform service market in China, ordering it to cease illegal activities, conduct comprehensive self-inspection and rectification, and submit self-inspection compliance reports to the State Administration for Market Regulation for three consecutive years.

Over the past three years, the State Administration for Market Regulation has strengthened supervision of Alibaba Group's compliance rectification, conducted in-depth inspections of rectification implementation, and entrusted third-party organizations to assess law enforcement effectiveness.

Based on the inspection and evaluation, Alibaba Group has fully ceased the "choose one out of two" monopoly behavior in accordance with the requirements of the administrative penalty decision and administrative guidance, strictly regulated its own business operations, diligently implemented platform responsibilities, improved corporate compliance management systems, enhanced service levels for platform merchants and consumers, achieved good results in compliance rectification, improved the online retail market environment, effectively restored fair competition order, continuously expanded market development space, significantly increased competition vitality among 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 standardizing operations, further enhance compliance quality and efficiency, accelerate innovation-driven development, continuously improve service levels, provide solid guarantees for building a world-class enterprise, and enhance international competitiveness