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Jack Ma gives up control of Ant Group, restructuring China’s largest fintech company to put it back on path for IPO
- Ma will end an acting-in-concert pact with three executives which gave Ma 53.46 per cent of the voting power in the fintech company
- After the restructuring, major shareholders of Ant ‘will independently exercise their voting rights,’ leaving no one in direct or indirect control
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Ant Group has overhauled its shareholding structure, diluting the voting power of founder Jack Ma to make China’s largest fintech company more “transparent and diversified”, a crucial step deemed necessary to put its much-anticipated initial public offering (IPO) back on track.
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Ma will end an acting-in-concert pact with Ant’s chairman Eric Jing, former chief executive Simon Hu and Alibaba Group Holding veteran Jiang Fang, which gave Ma 53.46 per cent of the voting power in the fintech company, according to a statement on Saturday.
After the restructuring, major shareholders “will independently exercise their voting rights”, Ant said. “No shareholder will, alone or jointly with another shareholder, have the power to control the outcome of Ant’s general meetings”, or “nominate the majority of Ant’s board of directors”, and “therefore … have control over Ant”.
The restructuring is the most substantial tweak to the world’s largest fintech company, amid its regulatory scrutiny after the November 2020 postponement of its US$39.7 billion stock sale in Shanghai and Hong Kong.
“It’s definitely a clear signal that the government has eased the curbs on China’s big technology platforms”, said Dai Ming, a fund manager at Huichen Asset Management in Shanghai. “We can also say that it is a step forward for Ant to resume its listing.”
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