Ant Group Denies Rumors About IPO Plans

Ant Group, the fintech company co-founded by Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, has publicly denied plans for a potential backdoor listing. The Alibaba affiliate responded to speculation on social media about intentions to go public, stating that these rumors are "completely unfounded." In a post made on the Chinese social media platform Weibo on Thursday, Ant Group announced that there are currently no plans for an IPO. The company warned that such rumors are being spread by various social media accounts to attract people to groups providing stock recommendations, urging market watchers to be cautious of these "stock recommendation scams." In its Weibo post, the company also shared an image showing several posts suggesting that a public offering could take place through a shell company. Ant Group, which owns the popular digital payment platform Alipay, had its IPO plans in Hong Kong and Shanghai halted by Beijing in 2020. Last year, the company was fined nearly $1 billion by Chinese financial regulators for issues related to corporate governance, investor protections, and compliance with banking and insurance regulations. Despite these setbacks, Ant Group was highly profitable before the postponed IPO plans, reporting a profit of $3 billion for the first half of 2020 at that time. Ant recently announced that Alipay+, which offers cross-border mobile payment and digital technology solutions, connects over 90 million merchants in 66 markets with 1.6 billion user accounts.