The Week in Numbers: Big fines and bigger mergers
Cryptocurrency victories and world first mergers, this is "The Week in Numbers."
$2.75 billion is the record fine slapped on Alibaba by the Chinese government.
An anti-monopoly probe found the e-commerce giant had abused its market dominance for years.
The crackdown indicates Beijing’s antitrust enforcement on internet platforms has ramped up.
It wasn't enough to rattle investors though.
Shares rallied this week after Alibaba said it does not expect any major impact from the crackdown.
$62,741 was the fresh high hit by Bitcoin this week.
The world’s biggest crypto currency extended its 2021 rally a day before the listing of Coinbase shares in the United States.
The largest U.S. crypto exchange's debut on the Nasdaq briefly valued it at more than $100 billion.
Ross Gerber of Gerber Kawasaki says the importance of the listing should not be overlooked:
"I do I think this is a huge moment in financial history, it's the first time we've seen an exchange and a decentralized monetary system that has really been a threat to the current monetary systems for its entire existence, now becoming legitimized. And I think a new era has begun for what we would like to call a decentralized finance or cryptocurrency.
$39.6 billion is the price Southeast Asian ride-hailing firm Grab settled on with U.S blank-check company Altimeter to list on the Nasdaq.
This transaction though will be the world's largest merger involving a so-called special purpose acquisition company or SPAC.
$7.94 billion profit for the first quarter profit booked by Citigroup.
That's triple the amount the bank made for the same period a year ago.
The strong results were partly thanks to a jump in investment banking activity
18.3% the amount China's GDP grew by in the first three months of 2021, compared to a year earlier.
It's the fastest growth recorded since quarterly records began.
This time last year, the world's second largest economy was in a deep slump as many of its cities went into lockdown.
