Ride share company Didi will pull its listing from the New York Stock Exchange just months after snookering Wall Street in a $4 billion offering that that initially traded a bit over $15 and now is settling at $6.
“’Following careful research, the company will immediately start delisting on the New York stock exchange and start preparations for listing in Hong Kong,’ Didi said on its Twitter-like Weibo account on Friday,” according to the New York Post.
The announcement caused a number of Chinese issues that trade in the U.S. to tank.
“Alibaba fell 8.2%, Baidu dropped 7.8% and JD.com shed 7.7%, with investors on edge as Beijing targets sectors ranging from gaming to education” said Reuters. “Education companies TAL Education (TAL.N) and New Oriental Education & Technology Group fell 8.8% and 9.2%, respectively.”
The Wall Street Journal called the development “the end of an era” in Wall Street-Chinese cooperation.
“The era of large-scale Chinese listings in the U.S. for any company with remotely sensitive data is over,” said the WSJ.
So is American naivete that somehow capitalism will cure the Middle Kingdom of its addiction to dictatorship.
Better to call the development the end of an error, not the end of an era. — John Ransom