Ant Group prices Hong Kong leg of stock offering at HK$80 a share in the world’s largest initial public offering

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma’s Ant Group set the price for the Hong Kong leg of its initial public offering at HK$80 a share (US$10.32), putting it on track to raise roughly US$17 billion in the offshore tranche of its share sale, according to people familiar with the matter.

The world’s most valuable unicorn is likely to make its hotly anticipated debut on Shanghai’s Nasdaq-styled Star Market and Hong Kong’s stock exchange on November 5, after the US election on November 3. Its stock code will be 6688.

Hangzhou-headquartered Ant’s coming out parade also illustrates China’s lead in digital finance. The number of monthly active users of Ant’s mobile payment app Alipay hit 731 million on September 30, dwarfing Palo Alto-based PayPal, the world’s largest payments platform outside China.

Ant’s payments network is just the gateway, funnelling small businesses and consumers into a broad financial ecosystem spanning lending, investment products and insurance. The system is oiled by a trove of data gathered in China, the world’s most populous country, making pricing more accurate and efficient. The coronavirus pandemic has turbocharged usage as people have turned to digital payments and e-commerce as a way of maintaining social distance.