Meituan shares drop as woes continue By CHENG YU | China Daily | Updated: 2021-05-12 09:13 Share CLOSE A deliveryman for Meituan, the country s on-demand service platform, delivers food in Beijing. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]
The share price of Chinese food delivery company Meituan fell 5.25 percent on Tuesday to HK$249,($32.07), after the company was summoned by authorities for harming the rights of deliverymen and consumers.
The company s stock price has fallen nearly 45 percent from a peak of HK$460 per share in February this year, which means that the $206 billion company has lost nearly half of its market value.
The plunge came as Meituan faced fresh scrutiny after a Meituan employee said during a conversation with authorities in Beijing that nearly 10 million registered deliverymen on the company s take-away platform are not regulars, but outsourced personnel.
A 1,100-Year-Old Poem Cost Meituan’s Outspoken CEO Billions
Bloomberg 3 hrs ago Coco Liu, Yoojung Lee and Ishika Mookerjee
(Bloomberg) It took just 28 Chinese characters on an obscure social media platform to ignite a controversy that’s rattled the country’s tech industry.
Popular Searches
Meituan CEO Wang Xing lost $2.5 billion of his wealth over two days after he posted verses from a millennium-old poem about the misguided attempts of China’s first emperor to quash dissent. Wang, a usually plain-speaking engineer who enjoys literary classics, later scrubbed his post and explained he was really calling out the short-sightedness of his own industry, trying to clarify there was no implied criticism of the government. But the damage was done: Meituan shed $26 billion over two days, the biggest loser in a broader tech rout, before bouncing back as much as 4.3% Wednesday.
Delivery riders for Meituan, one of China’s biggest food delivery firms, chat while waiting for orders outside a restaurant in Beijing. Even before Wang’s post, state media had run regular exposes describing the plight of Meituan’s delivery drivers, helping stoke online outrage. AFP
It took just 28 Chinese characters on an obscure social media platform to ignite a controversy that’s rattled the country’s tech industry.
Meituan CEO Wang Xing lost US$2.5bil (RM10.29bil) of his wealth after he posted verses from a millennium-old poem about the misguided attempts of China’s first emperor to quash dissent. Wang, a usually plain-speaking engineer who enjoys literary classics, later scrubbed his post and explained he was really calling out the short-sightedness of his own industry, trying to clarify there was no implied criticism of the government. But the damage was done: Meituan shed US$26bil (RM107.08bil) over two days, the biggest loser in a broader tech rout.
Article content
SHANGHAI China and Hong Kong shares slipped on Wednesday, dragged down by real estate firms after Beijing held a meeting on property tax to curb rampant speculation in the housing market, although tech stocks rebounded from a sharp drop in the previous session. At the midday break, the Shanghai Composite index was down 0.01% at 3,441.42 and the blue-chip CSI300 index was down 0.28%. Chinese H-shares listed in Hong Kong rose 0.2% to 10,452.06, while the Hang Seng Index was down 0.37% at 27,910.60.
We apologize, but this video has failed to load.
Try refreshing your browser, or China, Hong Kong shares weighed down by property firms on tax talks Back to video