Ant crawls away

Regulators foil Ma’s MoneyGram bid

Billionaire businessman Jack Ma on Tuesday abandoned his attempt to buy MoneyGram after getting the cold shoulder on the deal from President Trump’s regulators.

After MoneyGram announced that Ma’s Chinabased Ant Financial was walking away from its $1.2 billion merger deal, its shares tumbled 6.5 percent in after-hours trading, to $12.45, below the price in March before an auction for the company began.

The deal was scuttled because it couldn’t obtain approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, both companies said.

A few months ago, during the review process, CFIUS, which is a multi-agency presidential advisory panel, became concerned by the possibility of data theft by foreign countries, two sources told The Post.

Previously, the panel had focused narrowly on more traditional national security issues.

This is the second time Trump regulators have rejected a merger that was proposed by executives who have been supportive of his policies.

Ma, executive chairman of Alibaba, promised Trump a year ago he would create 1 million US jobs. Last June Ma hosted a well-publicized Detroit job fair. Ant is an Alibaba affiliate.

Randall Stephenson’s AT&T was one of the biggest donors to Trump’s inauguration, but he still saw the Department of Justice sue to stop AT&T’s $85 billion merger with Time Warner.

Losers in the MoneyGram deal extend beyond Ma.

Private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners led a 2008 buyout of MoneyGram and still owns 44 percent of the shares.

The Post reported exclusively Dec. 5 that Ma was expected to fall short in his third attempt to persuade federal regulators to clear the MoneyGram deal.