Alibaba shares rise after it completes three-year regulatory overhaul

Alibaba has completed a three-year regulatory "rectification" process following an antitrust fine it received on charges of monopolistic practices in 2021, China's market regulator said on Friday.

Shares of Alibaba rose nearly 3% in Friday's trading session.

On Friday, China's State Administration for Market Regulation, or SAMR, said that, over the past few years, it has been supervising Alibaba's process to become compliant with antitrust regulations. The rectification work has achieved "good results," the SAMR said, according to a Google-translated statement.

In 2021, China's SAMR fined Alibaba 18.23 billion yuan ($2.6 billion) as part of an anti-monopoly investigation into the tech giant. The regulator's focus was on a practice that forces merchants to choose one of two e-commerce platforms, rather than being able to work with both.

At the time, the regulator said the "choose one" policy and others allowed Alibaba to bolster its position in the market and gain unfair competitive advantages.

Since that fine, the SAMR has been supervising Alibaba as it gets in line with the regulator's requirements. Alibaba has now completed this process and has stopped the "'choose one of two' monopoly behavior," the SAMR said Friday.

The SAMR said it will now guide Alibaba to continue to improve its compliance and efficiency and to accelerate innovation.

The conclusion of the regulatory overhaul will help put one of Alibaba's worst run-ins with Beijing behind it. Jefferies analysts said in a note Friday that the conclusion of the regulatory process was a "positive" for the company, which "highlights this is a new start and ensures compliance in operations."

But the regulator's announcement could also signal the ongoing softening stance from