China-based e-commerce firm Alibaba’s financial services affiliate, Ant Group, has begun preparing initial public offerings in Hong Kong and Shanghai, it said yesterday.
Also known as Ant Financial, Ant Group runs mobile payment platform Alipay in addition to subsidiaries in areas such as wealth management, online lending, insurance and credit scoring.
The company is planning to list on both the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE)’s Star market and the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (SEHK), and the proceeds will be allocated to technology development.
Sources told Reuters earlier this month Ant would look to issue 5% to 10% of its shares at a valuation of about $200bn. It last raised funding in a $14bn series C round in June 2018 that valued it at $150bn.
Ant Group chairman said Eric Jing said: “The innovative measures implemented by SSE Star market and the SEHK have opened the doors for global investors to access leading edge technology companies from the most dynamic economies in the world and for those companies to have greater access to the capital markets.”
The series C round included GIC, Temasek, Warburg Pincus, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Silver Lake, General Atlantic, Carlyle Group, Janchor Partners, Discovery Capital Management, Baillie Gifford, Khazanah Nasional, Primavera Capital and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price.
Alibaba had agreed to take a 33% stake in the company in February the same year, in return for transferring parts of its intellectual property.
Ant had raised $4.5bn in a 2016 series B round featuring insurers including China Life in addition to postal service China Post, China Investment Corp (CIC), Primavera Capital, China Development Bank Capital and CCB Trust, part of China Construction Bank, at a $60bn valuation.
Undisclosed domestic insurance firms had joined China’s National Council for Social Security Fund to provide an undisclosed amount of series A funding for the company in 2015 at a $45bn and $50bn valuation.
