Alibaba shares fell again after Ant announced no plans to revive the IPO deal
Shares of Alibaba fell 8% in Thursday trading after financial firm Ant Group said it currently has no plans to revive its IPO, CNBC reported. In addition, a key regulator said it was also not conducting a review of the potential listing.
Ant Group’s IPO plan, controlled by billionaire Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, was withdrawn in November 2020 after regulators expressed concern over the company.
Since then, Ant Group has been asked by regulators to streamline its business to comply with state rules, including setting up a financial holding company.
On Thursday, Bloomberg cited sources familiar with the matter as saying that Chinese financial regulators had begun early-stage discussions about reviving the IPO. Reuters reported that Chinese leaders gave the green light for Ant’s listing.
But Ant Group has denied it and said there are no plans to IPO.
A company spokesperson told CNBC on Thursday: “Under the guidance of regulators, we are focused on stabilizing our rectification and do not have any plans to do so. conduct an IPO”.
Also in a statement on Thursday, the China Securities Regulatory Commission said that it had not conducted any “review and research work” related to a potential Ant Group IPO. CSRC added that it always supports qualified companies to be listed at home and abroad.
The cancellation of Ant Group’s $35 billion IPO in 2020 marked the beginning of 16 months of regulatory tightening from Beijing, wiping out billions of dollars in value from China’s tech giants.
But there are signs that Beijing’s crackdown on the tech sector is cooling off. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that authorities in China are nearing the end of investigations into ride-hailing giant Didi. Didi went public in the US last year but a few days later it became the subject of a cybersecurity investigation by Chinese regulators.
Last December, Didi said it was leaving the US stock market without giving a specific reason. The move was seen as an attempt to appease Chinese authorities, who were unhappy with the company’s overseas IPO.
Earlier, Kendra Schaefer, head of technology policy at Trivium China, a consulting firm, said: “Regulators are trying to make it clear to Chinese tech companies that they can IPO at any time. where they want, as long as their ‘home’ is in China and strictly adheres to domestic laws and regulations.”
In addition, experts believe that in the coming time, China will have more control over the data these companies hold. China has moved from one of the laxest data control regimes in the world to one of the world’s most heavily regulated data regimes, starting with a cybersecurity law in 2017, tightening Beijing’s control over data flows.
Source: CNBC
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