The Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba said it will work to keep its listings in New York and Hong Kong and follow the rules set by U.S. regulators.
“Alibaba will continue to keep an eye on market changes, follow all laws and rules, and work to keep its listings on both the NYSE and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange,” the company said in a statement to the Hong Kong bourse on Monday.
Friday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission put Alibaba on a list of Chinese companies that could be taken off the stock market if they don’t meet auditing requirements. The statement came after Alibaba was put on the list. As a result, shares of Alibaba that were traded in the U.S. on Friday fell 11%.
On Monday, the stock was down more than 5 percent in Hong Kong, but by the middle of the afternoon, it had climbed back up to around 2.2 percent.
Under the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act, the SEC finds public companies that have hired a registered public accounting firm to do an audit report in a place where the firm has a branch or office.
On Monday, Alibaba said that it had been added to the SEC’s list, which meant that the U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board could not fully review its audits for the fiscal year that ended on March 31, 2022.
Under the HFCAA, if the PCAOB can’t fully inspect audits of a U.S.-listed company’s financial statements for three “non-inspection” years in a row, the SEC must stop the company’s securities from being traded on U.S. markets.
The Chinese tech giant announced last week that it will try to get a dual primary listing in Hong Kong. The shares of the tech giant are already traded on exchanges in both the U.S. and Hong Kong, but the listing in Hong Kong is only a secondary one.
The company said in a statement that the first listing process in Hong Kong should be done by the end of 2022.
