Ant Group: the year’s biggest IPO is an Asian extravaganza
Get ready for “one of the largest” stock market floats in history, said Stella Yifan Xie and Serena Ng in The Wall Street Journal. China’s largest digital payments company, Ant Group, has shrugged off coronavirus concerns to announce its long-anticipated initial public offering, in a move that could value the company – currently the world’s most valuable privately held tech “unicorn” – at $200bn. In a sign of the times, the Hangzhou-based outfit, founded by billionaire Jack Ma of Alibaba fame, is “bypassing New York” with a dual listing in Hong Kong and Shanghai’s nascent Star market.
Although little known in the West, Ant – which runs the PayPal rival app Alipay – is already a mighty player in Asia, where its “explosive growth” is “increasingly posing a direct threat to big established banks”, said Matthew Field in The Daily Telegraph. No wonder investors are “salivating” at the prospect of Ma’s second big float. Known for his “lavish parties and eccentric tastes” (he has a history of attending company festivals dressed as a punk rocker or Michael Jackson), Ma, 55, “made waves” when he floated his e-commerce giant Alibaba in New York in 2014. But this “could turn out to be his biggest extravaganza yet”.
This listing will certainly give a big boost to Shanghai’s Star market – a one-year-old exchange for homegrown tech which China hopes will one day “outgun New York’s technology-heavy Nasdaq”, said Simon Duke in The Times. It’s also “a significant vote of confidence for Hong Kong, whose status as Asia’s financial hub has been questioned after Beijing imposed a tough new national security law on the city”. As for Ma, perhaps he’s preparing to thrill adoring fans with an impersonation of another 1980s pop icon: Adam Ant.