Ant Group ‘to close Hong Kong book early’ as demand for $34bn float surges
Alibaba spin-off Ant Group could close order books for its record-breaking float early after a frenzy of interest in the Chinese payments giant.
Ant Group, the company behind Alipay, yesterday kicked off the institutional book-building process for the dual-listing, which will see it raise $17.2bn (£13.2bn) in Hong Kong and the same in Shanghai and which will land it with a valuation of up to $320bn.
Books for the Hong Kong tranche were due to close on Thursday, although reports in Reuters and CNBC suggested that the deadline had been brought forward due to strong demand.
Reuters said the book for the Hong Kong listing was oversubscribed an hour after the launch on Monday. Ant declined to comment.
Shares in the Chinese fintech giant are expected to start trading on the Hong Kong stock exchange next Thursday. A trading date for the Shanghai portion has not been fixed.
The dual-listing will see Ant Group replace Saudi Aramco as the largest IPO ever.
Ant was founded by billionaire Jack Ma and had initially been part of his e-commerce empire Alibaba, which itself joined the New York Stock Exchange in 2014.
Since then, there has been a decoupling of US and Chinese stock markets amid growing tensions between the two regions.
On Tuesday, stocks in Hong Kong slid amid concerns that Ant Group's upcoming listing would prompt a liquidity squeeze.
The company's Alipay service is used by around a billion Chinese consumers, offering everything from a way to make payments to a platform where they can request loans and book taxis.
The Chinese firm is the world's largest mobile payments provider, ahead of rival PayPal, although 95pc of its revenues come from its home markets.
It recently said its profits had jumped more than 70pc year-on-year in the third quarter, in a sign the company was not feeling the pressure from the Covid-19 crisis. For the nine months through to the end of September, Ant recorded revenues of around 118.2 billion yuan (£13.5bn).
