Jack Ma’s Ant group is all set for the world’s largest IPO simultaneously listing in Hong Kong and Shanghai. The company is expecting to value it for $225 billion. With this IPO, Ant group will become the fourth largest finance company in the world.
The anatomy of the Chinese giant Ant group shows that it is a diversified business entity consist of different businesses such as asset management, lending, Online Payment, and insurance. In 2013, the Ant group created a money market fund that allows the investors to earn interest from the cash they have invested in an app of Yu’ebao money market fund. It is valued $173 billion in assets. 15% of the revenues of the Ant group is contributed by the Yu’ebao money market fund. The world’s largest digital payment platform Ali pay was formed in 2003 to provide a secure environment for online payments. It has 711 million active users worldwide and 36% of the total revenues contributed by Alipay to the Ant group. In 2019, the company entered the insurance market, creating a health care product called Xianghubao. This allows people to pay a small monthly fee that is pooled to help cover treatment costs for members stricken by diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, and even Ebola.
The Ant group’s dominance of China’s financial landscape hasn’t gone unnoticed by the country’s regulators. A looming threat is that the Chinese central bank’s creation of a digital yuan, which is a component of a push to regulate the steadiness of its payment system. Ant has faced regular scrutiny from authorities and warned in its prospectus that rising U.S-China trade tension could threaten its business because it gears up for the IPO. For instance, If the U.S. were to impose certain sanctions, it could affect Ant’s business in Southeast Asia and India
In 2018, Ant’s plan to acquire MoneyGram International Inc., a remittance company based within the U.S., was unsuccessful. Due to the Indo-China border clash resulted in FDI norms in India and it put a halt in the investment in the food delivery startup Zomato.
