Massive job cuts loom at Alibaba, Tencent

Alibaba Group (9988) and Tencent (0700) are preparing to cut tens of thousands of jobs combined this year in one of their biggest layoff rounds as the internet firms try to cope with China's sweeping regulatory crackdown, sources say.

While Alibaba is yet to specify a group-wide target for the layoffs, China's biggest e-commerce company could ultimately axe more than 15 percent of its total workforce, or about 39,000 staff, estimated one of the sources with knowledge of the company's plans.

Tencent, the owner of China's dominant messaging app WeChat, also plans to make employees redundant this year in some of its business units, said three separate sources with knowledge of the matter. Its unit overseeing businesses including video streaming and search will see a 10 to 15 percent headcount cut this year, said one of the three people.

Alibaba and Tencent did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The government is reining in its internet giants after years of laissez-faire approach that drove growth at breakneck speed.

Alibaba started to fire employees last month, the first source said. It discussed job cuts with several business units last month and left it up to them to make specific plans, the source added.

Layoffs at the company are set to start at its less profitable or loss-making businesses such as Tencent Video and Tencent Cloud.

Meanwhile, Chinese video-streaming platform Bilibili (9626) plans to pursue the voluntary conversion to dual-primary listing on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. After the conversion, the company will remain as a dual-listing company on the main board of Hong Kong and Nasdaq Global Select Market, and its Class Z ordinary shares and American depositary shares will continue to be traded in both stock exchanges, it said in a filing yesterday.