Suspected of spreading rumors about Alibaba Cloud placing a large order for Cambricon chips, two individuals have been fined 450,000 yuan (259,300 MYR) by China’s securities regulators—the fine is roughly 1,500 times their profit gained from the rumor.
The Beijing Securities Regulatory Bureau announced on Saturday (May 9) that the two individuals fabricated and disseminated false information about “related parties placing a large additional order for chips from a certain listed company”, making a total profit of 293.53 yuan from this, and issued a combined fine of 450,000 yuan.
According to a review by Yicai, the penalties are consistent with a market rumor from last year about “Alibaba purchasing 150,000 advanced processors (GPUs) from Cambricon.”
At the end of August last year, there was a market rumor that Chinese tech giant Alibaba’s Alibaba Cloud’s Tongyi Qianwen large language model was facing a computing power shortage, and that Alibaba urgently added an order for 150,000 Cambricon Siyuan 370 chips to fill the supply gap left by the suspension of NVIDIA H20 chips. Alibaba Cloud subsequently responded that the rumor was false.
The report points out that, judging solely from the profit amount and the penalty amount, the fine imposed by the Beijing Securities Regulatory Bureau this time is 1,500 times the profit, showing significant deterrent power.
With A-share trading booming and tech stocks leading the market narrative, news about celebrity tech companies’ orders and potential orders has become an increasingly obvious factor moving share prices.
The article notes that this year, regulatory authorities have increased efforts to crack down on rumor-mongering and misleading statements. However, unlike the direct fabrication of false information, listed companies’ “neither confirm nor deny” stance on information disclosure poses new challenges for the current stage of information disclosure regulation.
With A-share trading booming and tech stocks leading the market narrative, news about celebrity tech companies’ orders and potential orders has become an increasingly obvious factor moving share prices.
The article notes that this year, regulatory authorities have increased efforts to crack down on rumor-mongering and misleading statements. However, unlike the direct fabrication of false information, listed companies’ “neither confirm nor deny” stance on information disclosure poses new challenges for the current stage of information disclosure regulation.