Bloomberg: China's Richest Tech Moguls See $80 Bln Drop in 2021 Wealth

The 10 richest tech Moguls in China lost about $80 billion of their total wealth during 2021, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Leaders of China's major technology companies have suffered severe losses, as Chinese regulatory authorities intensify their crackdown on the sector.

This drop represents about a quarter of the total wealth of the sector's leaders, and is the largest drop in a single year since tracking the wealth of the world's richest in 2012.

Colin Huang, founder of Bindoodoo Inc., topped the list of the biggest losers during the year, after losing $42.9 billion, or two-thirds of his wealth, with the e-commerce platform's share falling by 70%.

And Jack Ma's fortune, the founder of "Ali Baba", witnessed a decline of about $13 billion.

The fortune of "Cheng Wei", founder of Didi Global, declined from $6.7 billion after the company's shares were floated in New York last June to about $1.7 billion.

And last November, surprisingly, the authorities suspended the offering of “AntGroup” after the markets were preparing to receive the largest initial public offering in history, at about $37 billion, a move that came days after the company’s founder, Jack Ma, criticized the financial authorities in China.

Since then, the Chinese authorities' campaign against technology companies has escalated, with listing rules tightening, prompting a large group of Chinese technology giants to withdraw their applications for listing on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, at a time when the Chinese authorities tightened scrutiny.

Chinese companies also face restrictions in listing abroad, specifically in the US market, which was once a haven for these companies in order to raise liquidity through the initial offering.

In the past year 2020, Chinese companies raised about $12 billion from their initial offerings on Wall Street, by offering 32 companies, the highest level recorded in the volume of offerings in nearly 10 years.

Regulators in the United States of America are working to tighten the rules for listing foreign companies in general, which may eventually lead to a wave of Chinese companies exiting Wall Street, if they do not comply with the strict provisions contained in the law, in addition to the reluctance of new companies to offer their shares abroad.

The Commodities and Securities Commission in the US has approved a new law called the “Foreign Companies Accountability Act,” which includes provisions that may accelerate the pace of Chinese companies’ exit, including that these companies be subject to financial scrutiny by American regulators and submit documents confirming that they are not owned by the government or Any other foreign entities.

The law includes provisions for Chinese companies, most notably disclosing the name of any person who belongs to the Chinese Communist Party, the ruling party, while giving the right to regulators in the American financial markets to stop trading on those shares if necessary.