(Source: Ant Group)

China’s biggest fintech unicorn Ant Group filed paperwork on Tuesday to dual-list in the Shanghai STAR Market and Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX), one day after the CSRC announced that it finished the pre-listing tutoring.

Ant Group’s filings on Aug. 25 didn’t specifically reveal how much the company hoped to raise through stock sales, but in one of its fillings, it indicated that the new shares it seeks to sell would compromise a minimum of 10% of its share capital, signaling a raise more than $20 billion.

Moreover, the industry and investors for the first time had a close look at the company’s financial situation.

The filings introduced that Ant generated a total of $17 billion in 2019, an increase of more than 40% from 2018, among which over half of the 2019 revenue came from wealth management, online payments, insurance purchases, as well as a variety of financial services from its affiliate Alipay. Ant also revealed its profit from 2019 was approximately $2.5 billion.

As a private fintech company with huge potential, Ant Group chose Shanghai and Hong Kong instead of American exchanges, indicating not only its confidence in the two financial hubs of China but also the company’s interest in domestic investors.

“We’re excited to notice that the Shanghai STAR Market and HKEX jointly introduced a series of reforms and innovative measures, which created great conditions for new-economy companies to better obtain both domestic and international capital market support. We’re pleased to have an opportunity to get involved,” Eric Jing, executive chairman of Ant Group said.

Prior to the filings, Ant Group went through a major senior personnel change. In June, Felix Xi Hu stepped down after working as Ant Group’s CTO for only seven months and the company appointed Xingjun Ni as the new CTO. However, in the 20-F document Alibaba submitted to the SEC in July, Felix Xi Hu was still listed among the 36 partners.

Back in 2019, Ant announced that Li Cheng ceased to work as CTO of Ant Group and was transferred to become CTO of Alibaba. Felix Hu Xi, then Ant’s deputy CTO, replaced Li Cheng as CTO of Ant.

The original article can be found at https://pandaily.com/ant-group-files-to-go-public-in-shanghai-star-market-and-hkex/

www.pandaily.com