Jack Ma's Ant Group raises its funding target to $35 billion, likely making it the largest IPO ever

Thomson Reuters

• Jack Ma's Ant Group seeks to raise its funding target to $35 billion through its initial-public-offering, according to Bloomberg.
• Ant, which is Alibaba's fintech arm and China's dominant mobile-payments service, has raised its valuation to $250 billion from $225 billion. Previously, the company expected to raise $30 billion.
• When Ant goes public, its listing will likely be larger even than Saudi Aramco's record-shattering $25.6 billion IPO late last year.
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Billionaire Jack Ma's Ant Group is seeking to lift its funding target to $35 billion through its IPO, after considering early investor interest, Bloomberg said.

The Alibaba affiliate's new target is based on an expanded valuation of $250 billion, revised from a previous estimate of $225 billion which could have raised $30 billion, Bloomberg said, citing sources.

Mobile-payment company Ant's parallel listings on the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock exchanges would mark the biggest float on record, beating Saudi Aramco's record-shattering $25.6 billion IPO.

After regulators examined Ant's transactions with Alibaba, and reasons for excluding the retail behemoth as a common shareholder, the Chinese fintech group won approval last week to list in Shanghai.

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The Hangzhou-based company expects to clear its next hurdle at a hearing with the Hong Kong stock exchange on Thursday, Bloomberg said. Its IPO is expected to take place in October, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Ant was formed in 2014 to run Alipay, a ubiquitous digital-payment service that is used by almost 1 billion people in China, and gets the bulk of its revenue from quick consumer loans.

Ant brought in 72.5 billion yuan ($10.5 billion) in revenue in the first half of 2020 and scored a profit of 21.2 billion yuan ($3.1 billion).

Ant CEO Eric Jing told Think Business in 2017 that the company named itself after the small insect because it serves "the little guys."

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