Bottom line: Alibaba's vague road map in its latest chairman and CEO annual shareholder letter is too far off to be meaningful, but does chart its aspirations to change from its current form to something more like an IT services company.
Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) founder Jack Ma and his heir apparent Daniel Zhang have just laid out their vision for the e-commerce giant in their latest annual letter ...
Bottom line: Haier's weak IPO under a new German program to internationalize Chinese stocks owes to lack of awareness and thin trading, and reflects challenges the new market will face in its drive for recognition.
What if you threw an IPO and nobody came? That's what seems to be happening for home appliance giant Haier, which has just made the inaugural listing on a new Sino-German stock exch...
Bottom line: Google's decision to finally talk openly about its plan to return to China looks smart though slightly late, by explaining the desperate need for alternatives in the massive though tightly controlled search market.
After staying mum on the subject for quite some time, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) is finally speaking out on its controversial decision to return to the China search market. I...
Bottom line: A Bloomberg report on Chinese government spying microchips in hardware used by Apple, Amazon and others may be flawed, but highlights the potential for such spying due to China's important place in the global supply chain.
As I return to blogging after a couple weeks absence, I wanted to weigh in on an explosive story that ran last week in Bloomberg about tiny spying chips that had...
Bottom line: The collapse of Dangdang's $1.2 billion sale of itself to HNA shows the deal was most likely fueled by backdoor connections with no grounding in financial reality, and the company will probably be sold ultimately at a much lower price.
It's Friday and I'm quite looking forward to the weekend, so I thought I'd indulge myself with a more gossipy post on the latest troubles of e-comme...
Bottom line: Big volatility for first-week trading debuts of Nio and Qutoutiao point to problems with pricing and investor indecision in the current market, and could point to more rocky debuts for at least the next few weeks.
When I previously wrote about low expectation for an IPO last week by new energy startup Nio (NYSE: NIO), I wasn't all that surprised when the company notched a more upb...
Bottom line: Nio stock is likely to give back most of its huge second day gains over the next couple of weeks, while Meituan-Dianping could debut strongly but will likely stagnate for its first two years as a public company.
It seems that perhaps I was a bit premature earlier this week when I wrote the latest listing by electric vehicle (EV) maker Nio showed investors had lost appetite for mon...
Bottom line: Nio's shares are likely to debut flat to down slightly in a lackluster New York trading debut, capping an IPO process pockmarked by investor skepticism.
Wall Street investors will get a taste of a new flavor of Chinese company very soon, when homegrown electric vehicle maker Nio makes its trading debut on Wednesday. But based on all the signals so far, this offering for a company t...
Bottom line: The detention of JD.com's CEO on sexual misconduct allegations makes for good headline fodder, but is unlikely to have any extra impact on the company's stock that is already under pressure.
The Chinese media have been buzzing all weekend over reports that e-commerce giant JD.com's founder and CEO Richard Liu was detained by police in the U.S. over sex-based allegations. The story ...
Bottom line: An internal petition calling on Google to be more transparent about its plans to return to China represents the first major backlash to the move, but is unlikely to dissuade the company from going ahead.
When the news first broke a couple of weeks ago that Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) was planning a return to China's search market, many predicted that western sources would be quick to cri...
Bottom line: Tencent's sudden pulling of a popular game just days after its release shows no one is exempt from Beijing's recent online entertainment clampdown, which could weigh on stocks of related company for the next few months.
A new statement from leading online game operator Tencent (HKEx: 700) is dripping with contrition, following the sudden yanking of a new hit game from its platform ...
Bottom line: Lackluster debuts for two of this year's largest China IPOs in Hong Kong points to a cresting of the current new listing wave, with sentiment starting to wane as investor appetite for new choices gets satisfied.
Two of the year's biggest China IPOs have formally launched in Hong Kong this week, each with a different story and accompanying moral to tell. The larger of those, and the...
Bottom line: iQiyi's establishment of a new sports joint venture and the venture's subsequent 500 million yuan in funding point to a measured expansion for its premium content business, which will be key to its future success.
I'm being just a bit coy with today's headline by suggesting that a new sports programming joint venture by online video site iQiyi (Nasdaq: IQ) resembles a similar expa...
Bottom line: A new report on Google's plan to launch a new China search engine within the next year looks credible, and underscores the company's decision to put the market's big potential ahead of the negative backlash such a move will bring.
A story in a publication called the Intercept is making big waves in China, saying search giant Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) is preparing a major about-face on ...
Bottom line: Huawei could challenge Samsung for the global smartphone crown in as little as a year, though a potential Achilles heel could be the "outing" of its surging Honor brand that most may not associate with the Chinese parent.
Smartphone pioneer Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) has just reported its latest quarterly results, which means that all the data tracking firms can simultaneously release th...
Bottom line: China used its traditional silent treatment approach to kill Qualcomm's bid to buy NXP, quite possibly to show its displeasure with recent US trade tensions, but resulting global pressure could forced it to be more transparent in the future.
We'll close out the week with my own quick-and-dirty post mortem of the collapsed deal that would have seen telecoms chip maker Qualcomm (Nasd...
Bottom line: Facebook and Google's latest micro-moves into China reflect their longer term efforts to get permission to launch major services in the market, though it's unclear if they will get such a green-light anytime soon.
You have to give China-challenged Internet giants Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) an "e" for effort. Both companies have popped into the China headlines o...
Bottom line: Baidu's withdrawal from Brazil reflects a broader inability of Chinese companies to succeed overseas due to their different practices and local wariness about their ability to protect user privacy.
In what is probably coming as a surprise to no one, media reports are saying that search leader Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) is pulling out of Brazil. This would represent the company's latest f...
Bottom line: Xiaomi appears to be gaining confidence of investors through moves like its entry into South Korea, but it will take at least another year to prove it really has the savvy to thrive over the longer term.
Newly listed smartphone maker Xiaomi (HKEx: 1810) has kept the world guessing these past two weeks with its on-again-off-again performance both on the Hong Kong stock exchange and...
