Exclusive: Ant Group Loses Two Key Executives as IPO Looms, Sources Say

Two senior executives have left Ant Group Co. Ltd. this month, sources with knowledge of the matter told Caixin, as the fintech affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. continues to shake up its leadership ahead of a much anticipated IPO.

Yu Shengfa, Ant Group’s vice president and chief risk officer, departed in early August, the sources said. Yu previously served as the first head of MYBank, one of Ant Group’s stable of online financial businesses. Before joining Ant Group, Yu was president of Bank of Hangzhou Co. Ltd. in the eastern city where Alibaba is based.

Hu Xi, Ant Group’s chief technology officer, has stepped down to rejoin Alibaba, which owns 33% of Ant Group. Hu, 39, joined Alibaba in 2007. He is a member of the Alibaba Partnership, a 36-member committee that has de-facto control over the e-commerce giant’s board of directors.

It remains unclear exactly why they departed.

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Ant Group has recently added five directors to its board and removed three others, the company’s registration information showed Friday. Ant Group now has a total of nine directors on its board, six of whom are members of the Alibaba Partnership.

Jiang Fang, Alibaba’s chief people officer, and Cheng Li, its chief technology officer, were newly appointed as nonexecutive directors. Jiang, an Alibaba cofounder, graduated from Hangzhou Institute of Electronic Engineering, the predecessor of Hangzhou Dianzi University. During college, she was a student of Alibaba’s former chairman, Jack Ma, who had taught English there.

Cheng joined Alibaba’s payment platform Alipay in 2005 and played a key part in its coding work. He was later named chief technology officer at Ant Group and chief operating officer of the company’s international business unit. He transferred to his current position at Alibaba late last year.

Ant Group’s board also welcomed three new independent directors: Hao Quan, a former partner at accounting firm KPMG; Hu Zuliu, also known as Fred Hu, a former economist at the International Monetary Fund and an early investor in Ant Group; and Huang Yiping, a Peking University professor and a former member of the Chinese central bank’s monetary policy committee.

Three others no longer served as directors: Daniel Zhang, Alibaba’s chairman and CEO; Maggie Wu, Alibaba’s chief financial officer; and Lucy Peng, Ant Group’s former CEO.

Last month, Ant Group began the process to do concurrent IPOs in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Rooted in Alipay, Ant Group has grown into an elephant-sized juggernaut that owns the world’s largest payment service and runs the world’s biggest money market fund, Yu’e Bao. The company is looking to raise $30 billion, which would make the offering the world’s largest IPO, sources with knowledge of the matter previously told Caixin.

On Tuesday, Ant Group filed the dual listing applications in Hong Kong and Shanghai. According to its filing (link in Chinese) with the Shanghai Stock Market’s STAR Market, the company plans to sell at least 10% of its enlarged total shares.

Contact reporter Tang Ziyi (ziyitang@caixin.com) and editor Michael Bellart (michaelbellart@caixin.com)

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