Jack Ma, Founder, Ant Group. Photo credit: UKTI [closed account], licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Ant Group, a Chinese fintech giant, is looking to hold a dual listing in Hong Kong and Shanghai that would set the world record for the highest amount ever raised from a public offering and it’s such that the company has now earmarked 80% of the shares that it’s offering in Shanghai to strategic investors, leaving smaller investors to scramble for the remaining 20% and more so in a lottery-like bidding process that’s usually adopted in China. 

As reported by Reuters, Ant could raise up to $17 billion in the Shanghai leg of its IPO, implying that an amount in the ballpark of $3.4 billion is to be scrambled for by smaller investors.

Altogether in its Shanghai and Hong Kong legs, Ant is seeking to raise up to $35 billion in what would mark the biggest IPO ever and beat the current record held by oil giant Saudi Aramco which raised $29.4 billion from investors in its public offering last year. Ant Group is said to be targeting a valuation of up to $280 billion on the public markets.

Ant Group is a fintech company that was spun out of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba in 2014. The company is best known for its Alipay payments platform which is used by over 1 billion people in China. Along with its payments platform, Ant also offers other fintech services such as wealth management, lending, and credit rating.

Ant has a very strong business, having churned out $3.5 billion in profits in the six months between October 2019 to March 2020. The company reported revenue of $18 billion in all of last year.

Ant is an affiliate of Alibaba, from which it was spun out by the company’s famed founder Jack Ma. As to that, Alibaba is a significant shareholder in Ant Group with a 33% equity stake.

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