
Just days after Didi’s Wall Street debut last summer, Chinese authorities banned the service from app stores in the country, and launched a cyber security investigation into the company. This investigation turned the company into a poster child for Beijing’s attacks on technology companies, removing tens of billions of dollars from market value.
Didi’s problems came to mind in December when it said it would leave the US stock market without giving a reason. The move was widely seen as an attempt to appease officials in China who were dissatisfied with how it became public abroad.
Didi (DIDI) will hold an extraordinary general meeting on Monday night in Beijing, where it is expected to formalize the process of withdrawing from Wall Street. Some of Asia̵[ads1]7;s best technology investors are among Didi’s shareholders, including SoftBank (SFTBF) and Tencent (TCEHY).
The Chinese company will then be able to proceed with a stock exchange listing plan shares in Hong Kong, as it announced late last year. It has previously said that it will not list on any other market until the withdrawal from the NYSE is complete.
While Didi has called the decision “voluntary”, the firm “implicitly indicates that the delisting is driven by the ongoing review of cybersecurity,” according to Cherry Leung, an analyst at Bernstein.
She wrote in a report last week that “the delisting from the US is necessary for Didi to cooperate with” the review from Chinese regulators.
Didi is also facing an investigation in the US: Earlier this month, it revealed that it was being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for the confused listing.
The company’s shares have crashed almost 70% so far this year.
“The company is in full cooperation with the cyber security review in China,” it said in a statement in April.
Source link