The increasing regulation in the People’s Republic primarily affects technology stocks.
(Photo: Reuters)
Tokyo The crash in Chinese tech stocks has pushed Japanese investor Softbank deep into the red. A loss of the equivalent of almost nine billion euros at the Vision Fund, which dominates the business, broke Softbank in a deficit of 397 billion yen (equivalent to 3.03 billion euros) in the past quarter. In the same period of the previous year there was still a profit of around 4.8 billion euros on the balance sheet. “We are not proud,” said Softbank boss Masayoshi Son about the Vision Fund balance sheet on Monday. You are in the middle of a blizzard, he emphasized.
For one thing, there were fewer IPOs between July and September, and many of the technology stocks Softbank is invested in lost value. The shares of the largest Softbank investment alone – the Chinese technology giant Alibaba – as well as the transport service broker Didi and the online retailer Coupang lost around a third of their value in the past quarter. The increasing regulation in the People’s Republic primarily affects technology stocks.