Chinese Regulators Suspend Popular Financial News App

(Bloomberg) -- Wallstreetcn.com, a popular financial news app in China, said Monday it was suspended by regulators.

The company has taken its app and website offline to make changes to comply with laws and regulations, according to a statement on its Weibo account, which has almost 3 million followers. It will strengthen self-inspection, improve management, and try to bring the app back online as soon as possible, it said.

The app and website became inaccessible earlier Monday without an official explanation, causing confusion among its users. The blackout comes after news sites including the Washington Post and the Guardian were blocked in China last week, according to a tweet from Greatfire.org, an organization that tracks censorship in China. The Bloomberg News website is also blocked.

Wallstreetcn.com has quickly become one of the leading financial news providers in China. It was founded in Shanghai in 2013, according to a Linkedin posting.

The app offered quick finance news coverage which was helpful to traders, according to Meng Huan, a portfolio manager at private fund Yunhan Capital. The app was free and the company also provided seminars and lectures that are useful to investors, she said.

In March, its parent company was fined by regulators in Shanghai for publishing news without appropriate licenses and for “disturbing” the order of online news broadcasting, according to local media reports later confirmed by the Cyberspace Administration of China.

--With assistance from Alfred Cang, Huang Zhe, Haze Fan, Yafeng Wu and Helen Sun.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ye Xie in New York at yxie6@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sharon Chen at schen462@bloomberg.net, James Mayger, Jeff Kearns

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