Alibaba's Ant Financial Looks To List

The South East Asian financial services and payments behemoth controlled by Jack Ma is finally doing the necessary admin needed to list on the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchange. Ant Financial Group, the operator of Alipay, a wallet that is used by 1.3 billion users in Alibaba's e-commerce networks could be worth as much as $200 billion.
If Ant Group is successful in its initial public offering, it will be one of the largest IPOs in years. China's richest man Jack Ma controls around 50% of the voting rights in Ant Group, while Alibaba has around 33% of the equity. This is after a restructuring that occurred last year September, leading to a profit-sharing agreement between the two businesses.

The biggest losers in this IPO has to be the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq. Ant Group had aspirations to list in the US, but the US-China tensions over trade is mudding the waters for Chinese entrepreneurs who run big businesses. We will be watching this listing with keen interest as it will help determine the value of a lot of unlisted payments businesses like PayU.