Ant Group’s historic IPO suspended in Asia

HONG KONG — The planned stock market debut of the world’s biggest online finance company, Ant Group, was suspended in Shanghai and Hong Kong on Tuesday, disrupting a record-setting $34.5 billion initial public offering that highlighted China’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

The Shanghai stock exchange cited regulatory changes in Ant’s industry and a possible failure to meet disclosure requirements but gave no details. Ant said later it would suspend its Hong Kong debut due to the Shanghai suspension. Shares were to have started trading on both exchanges Thursday.

The suspension followed a Monday meeting between regulators and Ant executives including founder Jack Ma, China’s richest entrepreneur. Ma also founded Alibaba Group, the world’s biggest ecommerce company by sales volume, which spun off its Alipay payments service to create the company that became Ant Group.

“Views regarding the health and stability of the financial sector were exchanged,” Ant Group said in a statement. The company said it was “committed to implementing the meeting opinions” but gave no details.

Ant apologized to investors and said it would wait for notice from regulators about further developments. U.S. shares of Alibaba tumbled more than 8% Tuesday, matching the company’s largest percentage decline since its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Ant operates Alipay, the world’s biggest financial technology company and, along with Tencent’s WeChat Pay, one of two dominant electronic payment systems in China.

In a joint statement, the Chinese central bank, securities regulator and other agencies said Monday they had “regulatory interviews” with Ma, Ant Group Chairman Eric Jing and President Hu Xiaoming.

Ma founded Alibaba in 1999 to help link Chinese wholesalers with foreign retailers. Alipay was created to facilitate payments in an economy where few had credit cards.

Alibaba currently owns one-third of Ant Group.