WSJ says China to Fine Didi

According to people familiar with the matter, Chinese authorities are preparing to fine Didi Global more than $1 billion, putting an end to an investigation into the firm's cybersecurity practises.

According to the sources, the fine would be more than 8 billion yuan ($1.28 billion), accounting for roughly 4.7 percent of Didi's total revenue of $27.3 billion last year. They refused to be identified because the information had not yet been made public. The potential size of the fine was first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

The ride-hailing company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters. Didi's fine would be the largest regulatory penalty imposed on a Chinese tech company since China's antitrust regulator fined e-commerce titan Alibaba Group and delivery giant Meituan $2.75 billion and $527 million, respectively, last year.

Alibaba's fine was equal to about 4% of its domestic sales in 2019, while Meituan's was equal to 3% of its domestic sales in 2020. Didi's punishment may pave the way for Beijing to relax a restriction that prevents it from adding new users to its platform and restoring its apps to domestic app stores.

According to Reuters, Didi, which was co-founded in 2012 by former Alibaba employee Will Wei Cheng and is backed by SoftBank Group and Uber Technologies, had previously set aside 10 billion yuan for a potential fine.