Ant Group makes international arm an independent unit, promotes veteran finance chief to president in reorganisation
- Ant International, OceanBase, and Ant Digital Technologies will each set up a board of directors as independently-operated business units
- Cyril Han Xinyi, a 10-year veteran and Ant Group’s chief financial officer since 2020, will be promoted to president, reporting to Ant’s CEO Eric Jing
Ant Group, the fintech giant affiliated with Alibaba Group Holding, is restructuring its operations into several independently-run business units, and will promote its finance chief to president, in the most significant reorganisation since its initial public offering (IPO) was halted in late 2020.
The overhaul, the details of which are contained in a letter to Ant employees seen by the Post, comes after a period in which Ant paid a hefty fine of nearly US$1 billion for regulatory violations, boosted the capital base at its credit unit and distanced itself from Alibaba co-founder and former chairman Jack Ma. Alibaba also owns the Post.
Its overseas unit Ant International, database operation OceanBase, as well as Ant Digital Technologies, will become three independent business units with their own boards of directors, paving the way for fully-fledged spin-offs down the road, according to the letter. The move is expected to spur growth and incentivise innovation.
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The three companies will roll out their own employee share option programmes, which will be “more compatible with their start-up status”, according to the letter. For the time being, Ant Group remains the holding company.
Cyril Han Xinyi, a 10-year Ant veteran and chief financial officer since 2020, will be promoted to president, reporting to group chairman and chief executive Eric Jing Xiandong, according to the letter. Han, who has been with the group since 2014, will be responsible for payments, connectivity and the digital finance business, the letter states.
Jing will take on the additional role of chairman of Ant’s international business, with Yang Peng acting as CEO. Ni Xingjun will be the chairman of OceanBase, which manages the group’s financial database, with Yang Bing as chief executive.
Ni will also be the chairman of Ant Digital Technologies, one of several companies participating in Hong Kong’s wholesale central bank digital currency platform pilot. Zhao Wenbiao is appointed CEO of Ant Digital Technologies, while Geoff Jiang leaves as president for “personal and career plans”, according to the letter.
The restructuring is “but one of the countless phases of growth in the future of Ant,” Jing wrote in his email. “Ant Group will continue to foster an inspiring environment for more new [businesses] to grow and blossom, and to create greater social value as they step out to thrive in the marketplace.”
The move is expected to drive Ant’s transformation to pursue a focus on artificial intelligence, accelerated globalisation as well as the development of Alipay, Jing said in the letter.
The latest restructuring is aimed at incentivising efforts to grow the three independently-run units, according to Wang Hanyang, equity analyst at consultancy 86 Research.
“To have the new units seeking their own path will bring out the entrepreneurial drive at them while reducing their reliance on the group,” said Wang. “This will take the pressure out of the monetisation push of Ant Group’s main business.”
Wang added that the changes are not likely tied to any rejigged IPO plans, with the group still expected to focus on regulatory compliance and business development for the time being.
Following the suspension of its 2020 IPO, Ant has gone through a series of compliance changes and business overhauls.
In December 2023, the Chinese central bank agreed that Alipay had no controller, a development that followed a dilution of founder Ma’s voting rights to around 6.2 per cent from more than 50 per cent previously.
Recently, Ant International has been driving growth at Alipay+, the cross-border payments solution in markets including South Korea and the Southeast Asian region, as part of a globalisation push by Ant in the past few years.
