JD.com to sell its stake in JD Finance for US$2.1b to unnamed buyer

JD.com, China’s second largest e-commerce player after Alibaba Group, has agreed to sell its finance arm as part of a spin-off deal that potentially creates the biggest rival to billionaire Jack Ma Yun’s Ant Financial.

The Nasdaq-listed JD.com said on Thursday it agreed to sell all of its equity stake of 68.6 per cent in the rapidly growing JD Finance in exchange for 14.3 billion yuan (US$2.1 billion) in cash. JD will get 40 per cent of the finance arm’s future pretax profit and it has reserved the right to swap this for 40 per cent of the finance unit’s equity, subject to applicable regulatory approvals.

Under the deal, Richard Liu Qiangdong, chairman and chief executive of the Beijing-based company, will take about 4.3 per cent of the unit, but maintain a majority of voting rights through proxy agreements.

JD. com didn’t reveal the buyer of its finance unit, which offers online financial services such as small loans and wealth management to small businesses and individuals, similar to what Alibaba-backed Ant Financial offers. The transaction is expected to close in mid 2017, the company said in a statement.

The deal was announced on Thursday as JD.com reported better-than-expected fourth quarter revenue for 2016. “The transactions of JD Finance have grown more than eight times over the past three years, exceeding 1 trillion yuan in 2016. We aim to make JD Finance one of the top three fintech companies in the world by 2020, serving thousands of financial institutions and millions of enterprises,” Liu said at the company’s annual meeting in early February.