Late on Sunday, Tencent Music Entertainment Group stated that it would buy back up to $1 billion of its shares. This announcement comes after the U.S. Securities regulator put forth stricter measures of compliance for foreign companies who wish to remain listed in the American stock exchange.
The statement from the Chinese music company said that it had a plan to repurchase its Class A ordinary shares which are in the form of depository shares. The buyback will be spread over a year beginning from March 29.
Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) noted that foreign firms would be delisted from U.S. Stock Exchanges if they don’t follow U.S. auditing standards. This led to a steep fall in share prices of dual-listed Chinese companies, one of which was Tencent Music.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will be adopting HFCA act wills soon the law requires that foreign firms comply with U.S. audits. They have to show that their ownership or management is not under an entity of foreign government. Board members are also expected to have no links to foreign governments.
On Friday, there was yet another setback for Tencent as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley sold a huge chunk of stock of several firms including Tencent, Baidu Inc., Viacom CBS and many more.
On Saturday, Bloomberg News and the Financial Times reported that Goldman Sachs had sold over $10 billion worth of stocks in block trades and the above mentioned stocks were among those that were liquidated.
CNBC reported that family office Archegos Capital Management forced liquidation was the reason why stocks were sold by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. When asked for comment by the agency none of the firms involved responded.
Sources familiar with the sale told Reuters that Bill Hwang had asked for a “fire sale” of stocks.
Last week Tencent Music shares lost up to 34 percent of their value.