‘The world’s biggest-ever wipeout of shareholder wealth’ – China’s latest business and technology news

Bloomberg reports that “ten years after PetroChina peaked on its first day of trading in Shanghai, the state-owned energy producer has lost about $800 billion of market value — a sum large enough to buy every listed company in Italy, or circle the Earth 31 times with $100 bills.”

• The article says: “In current dollar terms, it’s the world’s biggest-ever wipeout of shareholder wealth. And it may only get worse.”
• Bloomberg compiled an average of analyst estimates that predicts PetroChina’s shares on the Shanghai stock exchange “will sink 16 percent to an all-time low in the next 12 months.”
• PetroChina stock “has been pummeled by some of China’s biggest economic policy shifts of the past decade,” including government strategies to move away from a commodity-intensive development model, and clampdowns on speculative investments. Unpredictability in world oil markets has not helped.
• The “wipeout of shareholder wealth” has not been evenly distributed: The Chinese government is the biggest shareholder of the company’s stock, and the rest of its shares are listed on stock exchanges in New York, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, so different types of investors have had different levels of pain.

—Jeremy Goldkorn

• Digital money
  Cashless China: shoppers to spend $15t on their phones this year / Tech in Asia
• Apple
  iPhone 8 cheaper in China than in Hong Kong after falling demand forces retailers to offer discounts / SCMP
• Electric cars 
  Electric car maker BYD sees profits fall by a quarter but forecasts better times ahead / SCMP
  Baoneng steers into new-energy vehicles / Caixin
• U.S.-China trade and tariffs
  China hits back at ‘discriminatory’ U.S. trade move ahead of Trump visit / SCMP
  China has said it was “strongly dissatisfied” with the U.S. decision to impose anti-dumping duties ranging from 97 percent to 162 percent on Chinese aluminium foil, urging Washington to correct its “mistaken methods.”
• Fintech
  China regulator considers tightening grip on microlenders / Caixin
• Pharma
  China’s Fosun Pharma to buy French drug distributor Tridem in overseas expansion push / SCMP
• Ride-hailing companies
  Didi is said in talks with Daiichi Koutsu for Japan rollout / Bloomberg
• Debt and deleveraging
  China bond selloff spreads to stocks as deleveraging risks mount / Bloomberg