Ant Group led by Alibaba founder Ma Win. Reuters Yonhap News
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on the 27th (local time) that Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce company, is turning its fintech subsidiary Ant Group into a financial holding company under government pressure. If you become a financial company, you must be supervised by the People’s Bank, the central bank of China. Ant Group is a company that operates Alipay, Alibaba’s electronic payment system.
According to the newspaper, Ant Group has recently submitted such a business reform plan. When you become a financial holding company, you have to undergo more strict management and supervision, which places great restrictions on your business. So, at the beginning, Ant Group originally planned to turn one of its subsidiaries into a financial holding company and operate it as a financial subsidiary, such as microloans, and the parent company as an IT company. It is for free business operation.
The submission of the proposed business reorganization is interpreted as a sign that Alibaba founder Ma Yun has actually surrendered to the Chinese government. Ma Yun was under all-round pressure after criticizing the conservative financial supervision of Chinese authorities in October last year while preparing to list Ant Group. Ant Group’s plans to list about 38 trillion won in Shanghai and Hong Kong stocks were suspended, and Alibaba was investigated by authorities for violating the antitrust law.
If Ant Group is operated as a financial holding company, a full revision of the listing plan is inevitable. This is because the strengthening of regulations has no choice but to have a big impact on the overall business. WSJ analyzed that “when the business reorganization proposal submitted by Ant Group is confirmed, various regulations such as paying huge capital to financial holding companies must be followed.” It is reported that the project reform plan will be finalized before the Lunar New Year holiday next month after review by the Financial Stability Development Committee (FSDC) led by Deputy Prime Minister Liu Heo.
Azalea reporter [email protected]
