Jack Ma’s Ant Group is poised to apply for a key financial licence before the end of June, according to people familiar with the matter, a sign that its lengthy overhaul following a squashed 2020 listing is getting closer to satisfying China’s financial regulators.
Shares of Alibaba, which owns a third of Ant, have swung wildly in recent days as investors try to gauge how close policymakers are to concluding their examination of Ant’s operations. The stock climbed on Friday after Reuters reported that Ant’s application for a financial holding company had been accepted, before giving up most of the gains when state-backed media rejected the report, citing people close to the central bank.
Alibaba shares pared losses of as much as 3.1% to trade about 1% lower in US pre-market following Bloomberg’s report. The crushing of Ant’s $35bn IPO in November 2020 sent shock waves across the financial world, burning investment firms from Carlyle Group to Temasek Holdings that had expected a windfall. It also marked the beginning of a broader crackdown that ensnared some of China’s fastest-growing companies, erased more than $1-trillion of market value and caused a reckoning within the country’s billionaire class.