Ant Group tells staff it hopes to resume IPO, as Beijing finalises new rules for digital lenders
- Chairman has told employees that the fintech giant will eventually resume its listing, sources say
- Message comes as regulator reiterates stance that fintech platforms and digital banks should meet the same compliance requirements as other banks
Ant Group has told employees that it was hopeful of eventually resuming its initial public offering (IPO), and that before this materialises it was working on a plan to provide a solution for staff looking to monetise their stock holdings.
According to people familiar with the matter, Eric Jing, Ant’s chairman, told employees via the company’s internal website that it plans to offer a short-term liquidity solution to staffers starting April, the start of the fintech group’s financial year. While such a plan had not been finalised, it was likely to provide an interim solution for employees who had been hoping to cash out their holdings.
Ant’s dual US$34.5 billion IPO slated for Hong Kong and Shanghai was foiled at the last minute on the back of regulatory changes last November. Beijing has unleashed a raft of new fintech regulations and an antitrust inquiry into the country’s technology sector since then. To regulators, keeping a closer eye on Ant and treating it more like a bank than a technology platform reduces the threat of disruption and stops the upstart from exploiting loopholes.
“This is a process. Once the problem [is] solved, it will go back on track, to continue being considered according to the law,” Yi said in response to a question about approving Ant’s IPO in the future, at the virtual World Economic Forum in January. “You just follow the standard of legal structure, you will have the result,” he said.
The prospect of the IPO resuming comes amid comments by the chairman of China’s banking regulator, who said on Tuesday that online finance providers were free to continue innovating, but online-only banks, such as Ant’s MyBank, had to comply with the same regulatory scrutiny as traditional banks.
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