Billionaire Jack Ma's Ant Group blockbuster IPO — which could raise $34.5 billion — puts the fintech giant's valuation at a dizzying $315 billion. The Chinese tech champion's shares will begin trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and Shanghai's Star Market within days, making its initial public offering the largest on record, and the biggest IPO ever outside New York City. Beijing has been encouraging the country's top tech companies to list at home instead of on exchanges in the US, where scrutiny of Chinese companies is rising amid the long-running trade war. Ant's listing would also be more extensive than that of its sister company, the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, which raised $25 billion when its shares started trading on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014. The company is the parent of the Alipay mobile payment service, which offers hundreds of millions of people in China and Asia credit card, debit card, mutual fund and even insurance — all on a single mobile platform. Alipay has more than 730 million monthly users, more than twice the population of the United States. Last year, Ant earned $2.7 billion in profit on $18 billion in revenue. It handled $17.6 trillion in digital payments in mainland China during the 12 months that ended in June. Ant, an online payments business, is only selling about 11% of its shares. But the pricing values the whole business at about $313 billion. Ma's Ant shares are reportedly worth about $17 billion, taking his net worth to close to $80 billion and confirming him as China's richest man. According to Alibaba's most recent annual report, Alipay has 1.3 billion users. Most are in China, with the rest coming from its nine e-wallet partners elsewhere in Asia. Ant also offers wealth management, insurance and money transfer services. Chinese tech firms, including NetEase and JD.Com, have already raised billions by selling their shares via the Hong Kong stock market. According to the Bloomberg news agency, Ma told a conference in China on Saturday that the flotation would be of huge significance for Shanghai and Hong Kong. — Agencies
