Shanghai exchange cites ‘major issues’ when suspending debut
Ma was called into a meeting with top regulators on Monday
Jack Ma's Wealth Plunges by Nearly $3 Billion After Ant IPO Suspension
It was heralded as China’s answer to JPMorgan -- a homegrown financial giant on the cusp of the biggest stock-market debut the world has ever seen.
Instead, with billions on the line and an initial public offering all but sealed, Chinese authorities have abruptly thrown into doubt the future of Ant Group Co. and its celebrated founder, the billionaire Jack Ma.
Only days before the financial-technology juggernaut was to go public in Shanghai and Hong Kong -- a coup for China’s financial markets that once would have been unimaginable -- the $35 billion IPO was halted on Tuesday after Ma was summoned by regulators. In an extraordinary turn of events, authorities announced that they had belatedly discovered an array of shortcomings that, by some accounts, might require the sprawling Ant to be overhauled.
“The way I’d read it, it’s a deliberate public relations move,” said Sean Darby, chief global equity strategist at Jefferies. “This has happened before when companies appear to have become too big versus the state for the authorities’ liking.”
Reaction in the financial market was swift. Ma’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., which owns a third of Ant, plunged 7.1% in Hong Kong, after falling by the most in almost six years in New York. The sell-off reduced Ma’s fortune by almost $3 billion. Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing Ltd., owner of the city’s bourse, dropped 2.2%.
Jack Ma Photographer: Jean Chung/Bloomberg
The move upends what had been one of China’s biggest business success stories, as well as what was to be a pivotal step in the development of the nation’s fast-growing capital markets.
“It’s definitely surprising,” said Mike Bailey, director of research at FBB Capital Partners. “If there is something strange going on on the macro side for China’s financial markets or in the company, that would be worrisome.”
In just a decade, Ant, an affiliate of Ma’s Alibaba Group, has exploded into the world’s largest financial technology company, reshaping the lives of many ordinary Chinese. But its ascendance -- and Ma’s growing global reputation -- has also posed a threat to China’s state-run lenders and their political benefactors.
Tuesday’s developments left bankers and global investors groping for answers. The immediate fate of the many billions already tied up in the IPO is for now uncertain.
Changes Needed
Chinese authorities didn’t give much detail about the issues behind the suspension, beyond saying that the much-anticipated debut couldn’t go ahead because there had been “significant change” in the regulatory environment.
The company will have to make changes that include capital increases at its lucrative micro-lending units, according to people familiar with the matter. It will also have to reapply for licenses for the units to operate nationwide, the people added, asking not to be identified discussing a private matter.
The IPO is expected to be delayed by about six months, and funds will be returned to investors in the meantime, news portal QQ.com reported, citing an unidentified person.
Major gray market brokers for the deal, including BTIG LLC, told clients all transactions will be canceled, according to people familiar with the matter. Millions of shares were traded in the over-the-counter market prior to Ant’s planned debut, many at about a 50% premium to the listing price of HK$80 ($10.32). BTIG didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Full story at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-03/ant-group-says-hong-kong-ipo-also-suspended
Xi’s push against Ma poses new threat to Chinese tech companies
Chinese tech companies did a pretty good job convincing global investors that they operated independently from the Communist Party. Now, Jack Ma has become a case study for the firms’ biggest skeptics.
Companies from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to Tencent Holdings Ltd. splashed out billions on overseas acquisitions while developing apps and technologies that challenged Western rivals, with little or no state interference. But Beijing’s pursuit of Ma and his Ant Group Co. after he criticized regulators arguably plays directly into the hands of China’s biggest critics in Washington, who have long asserted that no Chinese tech giant or entrepreneur is beyond the reach of Xi Jinping.
U.S. authorities are now debating whether to ban investments in Alibaba and Tencent, according to people familiar with the matter, in what would be a dramatic blow to two of the companies whose shares are most widely held by global investors. Already on Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning transactions with eight Chinese software applications including Ant’s Alipay, and Tencent’s WeChat Pay, citing concerns that Beijing will have access to the data collected by the platforms. “I stand with President Trump’s commitment to protecting the privacy and security of Americans from threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement on the order.
Beijing’s moves could raise pressure on the incoming Joe Biden administration to push through further action detrimental to China, though it’s not clear how much of Trump’s aggressive policies the president-elect will continue.
The party’s sway over business has become even clearer over the past 12 months as Xi pushes to consolidate power ahead of next year’s big party congress, when he’s expected to extend his rule for at least another five years. Covid-19 has only served to strengthen his grip, fueling a war-like campaign to steer the economy back on track and snuff out perceived threats to national security.
“You need to be very mindful of who ultimately controls regulations, who controls licensing -- of who’s in charge,” said Mark Natkin, managing director of Beijing-based Marbridge Consulting. “And if you forget and you start to be overly critical or take too much of a role that normally belongs to the party, then you’re going to get chopped down a notch or two.”
Beijing has moved to fundamentally overhaul Ma’s trillion-dollar internet empire since demolishing Ant’s $35 billion public offering in November, a record-breaking debut that was to have been the entrepreneur’s crowning achievement. Authorities then forced his online finance titan to cap loans and devise a plan to hive off its most lucrative businesses. The government also launched a probe into alleged anti-competitive practices at Alibaba. The billionaire has not been seen in public since November and his absence from the recent taping of an African TV program he created spurred speculation of his whereabouts.
“There is a lot of power in the Chinese government’s economic and financial management infrastructure, and if Ant was going to erode that power, important people would see it as a step too far,” said Graham Webster, editor of the DigiChina project at the Stanford Cyber Policy Center. But “the Chinese government also prizes these leading companies as drivers of technological independence. The party would have to perceive significant threats to tear them down.”
The action against Ma sends the latest signal that Beijing feels emboldened to risk international fallout from measures meant to address domestic challenges. Xi has previously defied threats of U.S. sanctions to impose sweeping national security legislation on the former British colony of Hong Kong. Crushing Ant’s IPO risked alienating a plethora of powerful global financiers from Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund to Carlyle.
The U.S. has also cited concerns about Chinese government influence over private industry to justify its efforts to force ByteDance Ltd. to sell the American share of its TikTok social network and the global campaign to convince allies to swear off equipment made by Huawei Technologies Co. Supporters of such actions often cite Chinese policies such as a 2017 law that requires companies to “support, assist and cooperate” with intelligence agencies.
Like Huawei, Ant has also asserted its independence from the Chinese government, saying in a 2017 application to the U.S. securities regulator that it is “a private sector company and while a handful of Chinese state-owned or -affiliated funds own non-controlling minority stakes, they do not participate in company management.”
The party has long reached into private firms, including foreign ones operating in China. One way it does that is through the presence of party committees in companies, among them tech enterprises, that are made up of employees.
In addition, it dispatches officials to companies to oversee certain activities. Many tech leaders are also party members, including Ma, Lenovo founder Liu Chuanzhi and Huawei’s Ren Zhengfei. Tencent’s Pony Ma and Xiaomi Corp.’s Lei Jun are both delegates to the National People’s Congress.
The party also stepped in on several occasions to punish executives for mismanagement, including Anbang Insurance Group’s Wu Xiaohui.
But recent efforts to exert government influence over companies and intervene in the business landscape have reached new levels. That’s provided fuel to the China hawks in Washington, who argue that the party exerts too much influence over Chinese companies.
Xi needs business executives on his side to achieve strategic goals such as the “dual-circulation” economic plan focused on domestic consumption, developing secure supply chains and reducing reliance on foreign technology. While the world’s second-largest economy was the first to rebound from Covid-19, its recovery is showing signs of peaking even as global growth remains sluggish and ties with the U.S. stay fraught.
In a rare direct plea to the business sector in July, Xi called on executives including those from the tech industry to be more patriotic and help the post-pandemic economic recovery. “Outstanding entrepreneurs must have a strong sense of mission and responsibility for the nation, and align their businesses’ development with the prosperity of the nation and the happiness of the people,” he said.
Weeks later, the party revealed plans to tighten control over the private sector by extending its United Front networking operations further into the business community. The policy will “strengthen ideological guidance” and “create a core group of private sector leaders who can be relied upon during critical times,” according to guidelines published at the time.
“Under President Xi, the CCP has tightened its grip over tech companies and doubled down on its techno-nationalist initiatives,” researcher Alex Capri wrote in a recent report for the Hinrich Foundation. “In addition to placing party officials within prominent companies, it continues to neuter high profile corporate executives where there is the perception that they were operating independently from party directive or becoming too influential.”
https://exbulletin.com/politics/665558/
Chinese billionaire Jack Ma suspected missing!!!!
Speculation has swirled around Chinese billionaire Jack Ma’s whereabouts after reports surfaced that the high-profile businessman has not made a public appearance in more than two months.
The Alibaba founder also failed to appear as scheduled in the final episode of his own talent show, Africa’s Business Heroes, which gives budding African entrepreneurs the chance to compete for a slice of US $1.5 million.
Ma was supposed to be part of the judging, but was replaced by an Alibaba executive in the November final, UK’s Telegraph reported. His picture was also taken off the website.
An Alibaba spokesperson said Ma was unable to take part on the judging panel “due to a schedule conflict”, according to Financial Times.
“Today’s financial system is the legacy of the Industrial Age,” Ma said in the speech.
“We must set up a new one for the next generation and young people. We must reform the current system.”
Little over a week later, Ant’s IPO (valued at a record-setting US $37 billion or AU $48 billion), which had already received the green light from China’s securities watchdog, was suspended, with the Shanghai Stock Exchange saying Ant had reported “significant issues such as the changes in financial technology regulatory environment”.
But US veteran investor Mark Mobius said the move was designed to curtail financial institutions from getting too big.
“I believe the Chinese government stepped in because they realised that they had to regulate these companies, so that they don’t … get too big,” he told CNBC.
“The Chinese government is waking up to the fact that they cannot allow these companies that dominate a particular sector and particularly the financial sector.”
Chinese authorities launched an anti-monopoly investigation into Alibaba in late December and told Ant Group to restructure its operations.
Ma has donated millions of face masks to Europe, the US and the World Health Organisation in a bid to stem the pandemic.
The billionaire is also involved in charity work, with the Jack Ma Foundation focused on areas of education, entrepreneurship, female leadership, and the environment.
The Foundation has distributed or pledged more than US $300 million, Forbes reported.
Ma’s last tweet was on 10 October last year.
https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/jack-ma-missing-232138645.html
Jack Ma disappears from his own talent show
Jack Ma has disappeared as the public face of an African talent show he created, in a hint of the difficulties he is facing after a fall from grace in China.
Mr Ma was replaced as a judge in the final of Africa’s Business Heroes, a television contest for budding entrepreneurs, his photograph was removed from the judging webpage, and he was conspicuously left out of a promotional video.
The final took place in November, shortly after the Chinese tech billionaire made a candid speech criticising China’s regulators and its state-owned banks. In the wake of the speech, Mr Ma was dressed down by officials in Beijing and the $37bn initial public offering of his company Ant Group was suspended. He has not been seen in public since.
A spokesperson for Alibaba, which was founded by Mr Ma, said: “Due to a schedule conflict Mr Ma could no longer be part of the finale judge panel of Africa’s Business Heroes earlier this year (2020).”
One contestant in the competition said she had been star-struck when she pitched her business to Mr Ma in an earlier round. “You can’t imagine,” she said. But by the time of the final, Mr Ma had been replaced by Lucy Peng, an executive at Alibaba.
“There was something going on in China with Jack Ma or something, so (Lucy) also came in as well,” the contestant said.
More at https://www.ft.com/content/a91dfeae-da1e-4348-8212-bbfbe94d93bd
HOLY SHIT! Is Jack Ma going to settle down in SG????
Targeted by state, ebullient Jack Ma goes quiet
Jack Ma, the ebullient and unconventional billionaire founder of tech giant Alibaba and the totem of China’s entrepreneurial brilliance, now finds himself up against a Communist leadership seemingly intent on hacking back his empire and issuing a lesson that no one is bigger than the party.
Ma, the most recognizable face in Asian business with a fortune estimated at around $58 billion, has already faced the ignominy of having the world’s biggest-ever initial public offering spiked by Chinese regulators days before its launch.
The November share sale was set to see his wealth bulge to more than $70 billion in a record-breaking listing of the group’s Ant Group financial arm in Hong Kong and Shanghai.
But Chinese regulators abruptly pulled the IPO deal, over what initially appeared to be concerns about the company’s reach into the finances of hundreds of millions of Chinese people.
It was a brutal public rebuke to Ma, who was then called in for dressing down by regulators and has since evaporated from the spotlight he normally so ably commands.
Now China’s poster boy for enterprise finds himself again caught in the glare of the Communist-run state, with Thursday’s announcement of an anti-monopoly probe into Alibaba, the tech giant he founded, and the summoning of Ant Group by regulators.
It is another public relations catastrophe for Ma, a Communist Party member, whose rags-to-riches back story has come to embody a self-confident generation of Chinese entrepreneurs ready to shake up the world.
Charismatic, diminutive and fast-talking, Ma was cash-strapped and working as an English teacher when someone showed him the internet on a 1990s trip to the United States – and he was hooked.
He toyed with several internet-related projects, before convincing a group of friends to give him $60,000 to start a new business in 1999 in China, then still emerging as an economic giant.
Alibaba was the result, an e-commerce empire founded from his bedroom in Hangzhou and which started an online shopping revolution and grew into a fintech titan.
The company changed the shopping habits of hundreds of millions of Chinese people, and catapulted Ma into the global limelight.
“The first time I used the internet, I touched on the keyboard and I find, ‘Well, this is something I believe, it is something that is going to change the world and change China,'” Ma once told CNN.
In 2014, Alibaba listed in New York in a world-record $25 billion offering.
Ant Group, in which Ma is the largest shareholder, is now the world’s largest digital payments platform, claiming 731 million monthly users on the Alipay app.
But there are fears it reaches too deeply into the pockets of ordinary Chinese with its micro-loans, investment and insurance products.
Crossed the line?
Ma long enjoyed an image as the benevolent and unconventional billionaire.
Sometimes referred to in China as “Father Ma,” he is praised for his self-deprecation – he recounts having been rejected by Harvard “10 times” – and a knack for lighting up company events with song-and-dance appearances as Lady Gaga, Snow White and Michael Jackson.
As his fortune grew, Ma rebranded as a philanthropist – in 2019 retiring from the business to focus on giving.
But even his charitable work betrays an idiosyncratic touch.
After footage of a little boy in a village in central China who looked like Ma went viral, the businessman promised to pay for him to go through university.
But that reputation may be in the balance with the regulatory slap-down playing into a growing sense shared on China’s Twitter-like Weibo that he has leaned into hubris by criticizing fintech regulators.
He has faced his share of travails over the years in a country where getting rich risks catching the attention of the powerful.
Eyebrows were raised when the state-run People’s Daily revealed that he is a member of the Communist Party – something Ma has never fully commented on.
He had previously indicated that he preferred to keep the state at arm’s length, telling the World Economic Forum in 2007: “My philosophy is to be in love with the government, but never marry them.”
But perhaps the biggest challenges remain ahead, as the size and scale of his business mean that relationship may need to be renegotiated.
https://asiatimes.com/2020/12/targeted-by-state-ebullient-jack-ma-goes-quiet/
Looks like Xi isn't quite done whacking Jack Ma......
China rethinks the Jack Ma model
Alibaba, Tencent and a host of internet giants face new scrutiny from the Party
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The-Big-Story/China-rethinks-the-Jack-Ma-model
FYI the FamiLEE has a 7% stake in Alibaba through GIC (4.27%) and Temasick (2.73%).
Down $290 Billion, China Tech Investors Mull Worst-Case Scenarios
BEIJING • With 22 pages of vaguely worded edicts, China has cast doubt on the future of its biggest Internet companies and ignited a US$290 billion (S$391 billion) equity sell-off.
Investors are now working out how bad it might get for Alibaba Group Holding, Tencent Holdings and other Chinese Internet giants as President Xi Jinping’s government prepares to roll out a raft of new anti-monopoly regulations.
As is almost always the case, China’s leaders have said little about how harshly they plan to clamp down or why they decided to act now.
But the draft rules released on Tuesday give the government wide latitude to rein in tech entrepreneurs – like Alibaba’s Jack Ma – who until recently enjoyed an unusual amount of freedom to expand their empires across nearly every aspect of Chinese life.
The country’s Internet ecosystem – which has long been protected from competition by the likes of Google and Facebook – is dominated by two companies, Alibaba and Tencent, through a labyrinthine network of investment that encompasses the vast majority of the country’s start-ups in arenas from artificial intelligence (SenseTime, Megvii) to fresh vegetables (Meicai) to digital finance (Ant Group).
Their patronage has also groomed a new generation of titans, including food and travel giant Meituan and Didi Chuxing, China’s Uber.
Those that prosper outside their aura – the largest being ByteDance, the owner of TikTok – are rare.
The anti-monopoly rules now threaten to upset that status quo with a range of potential outcomes, from a benign scenario of fines to a break-up of industry leaders.
While few China watchers claim to know where in that spectrum the authorities will land, most view this week as a turning point.
“The Wild West era of policy arbitrage – taking advantage of weak regulations over the sector – has come to an end,” said securities attorney John Dong of Joint-Win Partners in Shanghai.
Here are some scenarios that analysts and investors are considering:
1. MILD
Optimists say regulators are merely reasserting their right to oversee Internet companies, without trying to initiate drastic change.
Even if the authorities do take action, China has a tradition of cracking down in fits and starts, or making examples out of high-profile companies.
Tencent, for instance, became a prominent target of a campaign to combat gaming addiction among children in 2018. While its shares took a hit, they eventually recovered to all-time highs.
Alibaba has done the same after running afoul of the authorities on everything from unfairly squeezing merchants to turning a blind eye to fakes.
Both companies were worth around US$800 billion before shares began tanking this month.
“Each Internet leader may face some impact and have to adjust their practices, but the regulations will unlikely affect their leadership,” said Hong Kong-based CLSA analyst Elinor Leung
“Internet platforms, by nature, are scale businesses.”
Alibaba’s general manager of Tmall marketing and operations Liu Bo said on the sidelines of the company’s Singles’ Day celebration on Wednesday that he was not surprised by the new rules, and that the government was “improving” oversight across various industries.
Chinese Internet stocks, led by Meituan and Tencent, gained at least 3 per cent yesterday, recouping some of their two-day loss.
2. BAD
Some analysts predict there is a crackdown coming, but a targeted one. They point to language in the regulations that suggests a heavy focus on online commerce, from forced exclusive arrangements with merchants known as “pick one of two” to algorithm-based prices favouring new users.
The regulations specifically warn against selling below cost to weed out rivals.
Those kinds of strategies helped drive eBay and Amazon.com out of China and have led companies – including Alibaba, JD.com and upstart Pinduoduo – to accuse one another of using underhanded tactics.
Also embedded within the rules is a reference to the need for official approval on all mergers and acquisitions involving variable interest entities (VIEs).
The VIE model has never been formally endorsed by Beijing but has been used by tech titans such as Alibaba to list shares overseas.
Under the structure, Chinese corporations transfer profits to an offshore entity with shares that foreign investors can then own.
Pioneered by Sina Corp and its investment bankers during a 2000 initial public offering, the VIE framework rests on shaky legal ground and foreign investors have been perennially nervous about their bets unwinding overnight.
“The VIE structure has been operating in a grey area in China and, till this date, there’s no law saying if it’s illegal or not,” said antitrust specialist Zhan Hao, a managing partner at Beijing-based AnJie Law Firm.
One worry is that uncertainty surrounding the new rules will chill investment, acquisitions and venture capital funding until officials shed more light on what they are prepared to do.
3. NIGHTMARE
Most worst-case scenarios revolve around the idea that China’s leaders have grown frustrated with the swagger of tech billionaires and want to teach them a lesson by breaking up their companies – even if it means short-term pain for the economy and markets.
The country’s private sector has maintained a delicate relationship with the Chinese Communist Party for decades, and has only recently been recognised as central to the nation’s future.
Many commentators have attributed the recent crackdown on fintech companies to remarks made by Alibaba’s Mr Ma at a conference last month, when he decried attempts to rein in the burgeoning field as short-sighted and outmoded.
Buried within the anti-monopoly rules is a paragraph brandishing vague but seemingly dire threats: Companies that violate anti-monopoly regulations may be barred from acquisitions.
And, if they are to be allowed to proceed, they may be forced to divest assets, share intellectual property or technologies, or open up infrastructure to competitors and adjust their algorithms.
“It’s highly likely that the guidelines will bring about the eventual splitting off of subsidiaries, and could result in the elimination of a lot of non-compliant smaller firms,” said Joint-Win Partners’ Mr Dong. “No country in the world would allow all these to exist in one huge entity.”
Alibaba, Ant and Tencent alone commanded a combined market capitalisation of nearly US$2 trillion before last week, easily surpassing state-owned behemoths such as Bank of China as the country’s most valuable companies.
Alibaba and Tencent are also key backers of leaders in adjacent industries – such as Meituan and Didi Chuxing. They have invested billions of dollars in hundreds of up-and-coming mobile and Internet companies, gaining kingmaker status in the world’s largest smartphone and Internet market.
Mr Dong said: “There’s no such thing as too big to fail, not in China.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-11/down-290-billion-china-tech-investors-mull-nightmare-scenarios
Ant Group to push ahead with S'pore digital bank licence application after IPO scrapped
https://www.straitstimes.com/business/banking/ant-group-to-push-ahead-still-with-spore-digital-bank-licence-application-after-ipo
Jack Ma's Blunt Words Just Cost Him $35 Billion
Jack Ma is a very busy man.
China’s richest man has been busy launching the world’s biggest IPO. He has been busy preparing for Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s grandest four-day Double Eleven shopping extravaganza. And yet two weeks ago, Ma somehow found the time to opine on China’s banking system at a high-profile financial forum in Shanghai, once again throwing himself into the eye of the storm.
In that speech, apart from labeling the global banking Basel Accords as an “old people’s club,” Ma said “systemic risk” is not the issue in China. Rather, China’s biggest risk is that it “lacks a financial ecosystem.” Chinese banks are like “pawn shops”, where collateral and guarantees are the hard currencies. As a result, some decided to go so big they are not allowed to fail. “As the Chinese like to say, if you borrow 100,000 yuan from the bank, you are a bit scared; if you borrow a million yuan, both you and the bank are a little nervous; but if you take a 1 billion yuan loan, you are not scared at all, the bank is,” Ma said.
The consequences came this week. On Monday, Beijing’s top financial watchdogs summoned Ma and dressed him down. Beijing also issued draft rules on online micro lending, stipulating stricter capital requirements and operational rules for some of Ant Group Co.’s consumer credit businesses. But the big shocker came on Tuesday night. The Shanghai Stock Exchange suspended Ant’s listing on its Star board, citing Monday's meeting and subsequent regulatory changes. Ant then said in a filing it would suspend its Hong Kong IPO as well. The fintech giant was scheduled to start trading on Thursday. The news sparked a slide in Alibaba shares on Tuesday in New York, while dragging down other Chinese companies’ U.S.-listed stocks.
What Ma said was a bit sensational, perhaps. But he was right. China’s bankers are so averse to extending credit to smaller borrowers that Beijing redefined “inclusive =financing” to make its banks’ loan books look prettier. In fact, it’s been so difficult for small businesses to obtain bank credit in the last decade that they have become hard wired not to invest for the future. Here’s the latest tidbit of evidence: In the third quarter, even as China’s economy recovered and 86% of 300 smaller manufacturers CLSA spoke to became profitable, most remained wary. A record-breaking 59% of their capital expenses went into mere “regular maintenance,” the brokerage found.
Ma’s words were blunt, but these phrases, such as “pawn shops,” are not his concoctions. Bureaucrats at the People’s Bank of China, for instance, had used the same words themselves. So why is Ma being singled out?
Could it be that Ant is too profitable and is now being targeted? Ant is raising at least $34.5 billion in an IPO that attracted more than $3 trillion of retail orders. Meanwhile, regional banks are still in the doghouse, struggling and sometimes being restructured because they lack capital buffers.
In the fast-growing consumer credit business, Ant is essentially a matchmaker while banks lend and put aside cash in case some loans go sour. Fintech giants are making much more than lenders, city commercial banks complained to local media.
Ant’s vast consumer base appreciates its small loan offerings. But going forward, to appease its banks, Beijing may want to level the regulatory playing field. For instance, Ant may no longer operate just as a matchmaker and might be asked to keep 30% of the loans on its balance sheet, compared with only about 2% now. That should have been no problem because Ant’s IPO would have brought in billions of dollars of capital for loan provisions.
In its statement, the Shanghai exchange cited the changing regulatory landscape as one reason Ant no longer qualified for a listing. But in reality, nothing has changed. Since 2017, Beijing’s watchdogs have been debating whether to allow online micro lenders to take a simple loan facilitation model or require them to put away loan provisions. This new draft rule is just a continuation of the debate.
At the opening of his speech, Ma admitted he was conflicted as to whether to attend the forum and speak up. Now he probably regrets it. But here’s the thing: If China is serious about financial innovation, “inclusive financing” or the digital yuan, let the man who pioneered the business and made billions along the way share his experiences and thoughts. If Ma says systemic risk is not China’s Achilles’ heel, hear him out. He knows where the real problem is and could be part of the solution.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jack-mas-blunt-words-just-180824380.html
Someone shot his mouth off, and paid the ultimate price for it. :P
Me see that guai lan alien face tio fixed, feel sibei song!!!!!
Pot of honey offered to Winnie Xi not big enough? Just upsize the goddamn tribute, problem solved.