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Johannesburg - South African shares followed global stock markets lower on Friday, as traders grappled with an outage of Bloomberg financial terminals and fears of a regulatory clampdown on trading in China.
Shares in media and e-commerce group Naspers [JSE:NPN], SA's biggest firm by value, led the decline, falling 3.4% as its fortunes are closely tied to those of China's Tencent Holdings, in which it holds a minority stake.
Tencent, one of China's largest Internet companies, has been a lucrative bet for Naspers but its shares fell 1.2%, while China's H-Share index futures HCEIc1 were down more than 5%, pointing to a potentially big sell-off on Monday.
READ: Naspers' Tencent bet pays off as shares surge
Markets were spooked by reports of a crackdown in China on over-the-counter margin trading and regulatory allowances for fund managers to lend shares for short-selling, as this could staunch the flow of money into Chinese exchanges.
Traders also said Naspers was due for a pull back after its shares surged past R2 000 rand for the first time on Monday.
"People think the share had overshot a little bit, too high too quickly," Cratos Capital's, Greg Davies, said.
Petrochemicals group Sasol [JSE:SOL], which is repatriating 340 South Africans working at its projects in Mozambique over security fears, fell 2.4%.
Sasol said as a result of the repatriation, work at some of its projects had been halted temporarily.
The benchmark Top-40 index ended 1.07% lower at 47 491 while the broader All-Share index ended almost 1% down at 53 734.
Activity was slightly above average, with 190 million shares changing hands.
