Ant Financial closes private placement
Print Edition
CHINA’S Ant Financial Services Group, e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s Internet finance affiliate, closed a private placement valuing the unit at about US$45 billion, a person familiar with the matter said yesterday.
Ant Financial sold stakes to external investors, including China Development Bank Capital Co and a holding company affiliated with David Yu, the co-founder of Alibaba Executive Chairman Jack Ma’s private equity firm Yunfeng Capital, the person said, adding that they did not know how much was raised.
China’s National Social Security Fund acquired about 5 percent, the person said. On its official Weibo microblog, Ant Financial confirmed the fund had invested, reflecting the faith in Ant Financial’s future growth and profit.
Yu had previously bought shares in Ant Financial, but with his holding firm’s stake increase he and other external investors now hold 12.4 percent of the company, the person said.
Ant Financial is valuable because it operates Alipay, the crown jewel in Alibaba’s e-commerce empire, which allows shoppers and merchants to make online transactions easily in China’s otherwise unmodernized payment processing environment.
The government has also given Ant Financial the green light to run an Internet bank and wealth-management products. The motive is to shake up China’s stodgy and conservative finance sector, where state-owned banks have underserved smaller business and individual borrowers.
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