China opens Door to Ant Group’s Stock Market debut

The governor of China's central bank has indicated that the door for Ant Group's stock market debut remains open. In November, Ant, funded by the billionaire founder of the e-commerce company Alibaba, Jack Ma, was scheduled to list its shares. The listing was suspended by regulators and a major shake-up at Alibaba was later ordered by the People's Bank of China. After he missed a television engagement earlier this month, concerns also grew about Mr Ma's whereabouts. He made his first appearance last week after regulators cracked down on his business empire, speaking as part of a charity event to a group of teachers via video-conferencing software.

Bank Governor Gang Yi has suggested that, under the right circumstances, the share market listing of Ant Group could be reconsidered. Before it was abruptly halted, Chinese tech giant Ant Group was set to sell shares worth about $34.4bn (£26.5bn). The Shanghai and Hong Kong listings would have been the largest debut on the stock exchange to date. Yi on Tuesday, speaking at the World Economic Forum's virtual meeting on Tuesday said, "I'd say you just follow the standard of legal instruction, you'll have the result."

The decision to stop the Ant Group listing was described by Mr Yi as a "complicated issue." With more than 730 million monthly users on its Alipay digital payments service, Ant Group is China's largest payments provider. The business also has a division for consumer loans, which takes bank fees to match borrowers with lending services. At a financial technology conference in October, Mr. Ma raised the ire of Chinese government officials when he compared China's state-dominated banking sector to 'pawn shops' and lamented their lack of creativity. Some saw the crackdown by the government on the business empire of Mr. Ma as a vengeful communist party lashing out at the outspoken businessman.

But the government has been dealing with emerging technologies and their potential repercussions for China's financial system's stability, and a long-standing policy priority is to reform the industry. Financial technology companies have opened up China's financial system and have provided smaller borrowers more options, but some potential risks have been generated by the changes, Mr Yi said. "That advantage is obvious, but at the same time we can also see some risks to the protection and information of consumers and also some potential for monopoly and also some misuse of monopoly power," he added. Although the Ant Group has come under intense regulatory scrutiny, Tencent, its tech competitor, has soared on the stock exchange in Hong Kong.