According to Bloomberg, on March 26, Goldman Sachs, the largest investment bank, liquidated $10.5 billion worth of stocks in block trades, part of an extraordinary spree of selling.
Reportedly, it has sold $6.6 billion worth of shares of Baidu Inc., Tencent Music Entertainment Group, and Vipshop Holdings Ltd. It was followed by the sale of $3.9 billion of shares in Viacom to CBS Inc., Discovery Inc., Farfetch Ltd., iQiyi Inc., and GSX Techedu Inc.
Stocks of eight companies were sold in two stages. At the first stage, the total amount of sales came in at $6.6 billion. At the second stage, the bank gained $3.9 billion. According to CNBC, the unregistered stock offerings were managed by Archegos Capital Management, founded by Bill Hwang, an ex-analyst at Tiger Management. According to preliminary estimates, the size of some transactions reached up to $1 billion. Analysts at Bloomberg pointed out "The liquidation triggered price swings for every stock involved in the high-volume transactions, rattling traders and prompting talk that a hedge fund or family office was in trouble and being forced to sell."
The sell-off has led to the depreciation of shares of leading Chinese and American corporations, such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and NetEase Inc. However, shortly after, the stock market managed to recover, experts summarized.
