Ant Group Files for Dual Listing in Hong Kong and Shanghai

What’s new: Financial giant Ant Group Co. Ltd. on Tuesday filed for concurrent IPOs on Shanghai’s STAR Market and in Hong Kong to bolster its expansion in the fintech industry.

Neither prospectus specified a price range for the sale. The company said that it will issue new shares accounting for at least 10% of total shares following the concurrent IPOs, according to its prospectus (link in Chinese) filed to the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Ant Group plans to use the proceeds to further digitalize its services, expand its cross-border payment initiatives and enhance its research and development capabilities, it said in the Hong Kong prospectus.

What’s the background: Sources with knowledge of the IPOs previously told Caixin that Ant Group plans to raise around $30 billion. If all goes to plan, the listing would be the largest ever, surpassing even Saudi Arabian oil giant Saudi Aramco’s $29.4 billion IPO about half a year ago.

Formerly known as Ant Financial, the financial affiliate of New York- and Hong Kong-listed e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. grew substantially on the back of payment platform Alipay, one of the two biggest digital wallet services in China.

Ant Group claimed in the prospectuses that Alipay has over 1 billion users and 80 million merchants. At the end of June, Alipay had about 711 million monthly active app users.

For the 12 months ended June 30, Ant Group saw about 118 trillion yuan ($17 trillion) of total transactions on its platform on the Chinese mainland, according to the prospectuses.

Contact reporter Timmy Shen (hongmingshen@caixin.com) and editor Heather Mowbray (heathermowbray@caixin.com)

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