Alibaba Group Holding Ltd – ADR (NYSE:BABA) shares are trading lower by 4.29% to $104.50 Thursday afternoon. The stock is trading lower following a Wall Street Journal report titled “Alibaba Executives Called In by China Authorities as It Investigates Historic Data Heist.” Also, Reuters reported Alibaba is cutting over a third of its investment after a regulatory lockdown.
What Happened?
Per the WSJ report, “the investigation revolves around a cache of sensitive Shanghai police data on an estimated nearly one billion Chinese citizens, which was offered for sale online for the equivalent of roughly $200,000 in late June.” WSJ says the “cybersecurity researchers said a dashboard for managing the database had been left open on the public internet without a password for more than a year, making it easy to pilfer and erase its contents.”
Why it Matters
Shares of several Chinese companies are trading lower in recent sessions amid a resurgence in COVID cases which has caused the closure of Macau casinos. Additional regulatory pressures and investigations by the People’s Republic of China into Alibaba may further cloud investor outlook in the name.
According to data from Benzinga Pro, Alibaba has a 52-week high of $216.60 and a 52-week low of $73.28.
