(Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc liquidated $10.5 billion worth of stocks in block trades as part of a selling spree that erased $35 billion from the values of stocks of major companies, Bloomberg News reported on Saturday.
The bank sold $6.6 billion worth of shares of Baidu Inc, Tencent Music Entertainment Group and Vipshop Holdings Ltd, before the U.S. market opened on Friday, the report said, citing an email to clients seen by Bloomberg News. https://bloom.bg/3lYOrZm
Following this, Goldman sold $3.9 billion worth of shares in ViacomCBS Inc, Discovery Inc, Farfetch Ltd, iQIYI Inc and GSX Techedu Inc, according to the report.
Goldman Sachs did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Most of the unregistered stock offerings were managed by Morgan Stanley, on behalf of one or more undisclosed shareholders, the report added, citing people familiar with the matter.
Calculations based on Bloomberg data showed that some trades exceeded $1 billion in individual companies, the report said.
Shares in ViacomCBS and Discovery tumbled around 27% each on Friday, while U.S.-listed shares of China based Baidu and Tencent Music plunged this week, dropping as much as 33.5% and 48.5%, respectively, from Tuesday’s closing levels.
(Reporting by Juby Babu in Bengaluru; editing by Diane Craft)
