Ant Group, one of China's biggest financial technology powerhouses, formerly known as Alipay, has recently recruited one of their risk-control top managers for their consumer loan business unit. The new executive will work with them in the top management to assist their transition process as they proceed through a state-guided reorganization. This follows the failure of their first initial public offering (IPO), which was unexpectedly canceled in 2020.
Ant Group Moves Up Qiao Zhanwen, a Risk Manager, To Help With Reorganization
According to a statement released by the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission's Chongqing office on Friday, the nomination of Qiao Zhanwen as vice-president of Chongqing Ant Consumer Finance has already been accepted.
Ant Group established the consumer lending business in June of last year to handle its Huabei and Jiebei services, which had previously provided consumers with consumer credit such as Chinese microloans. These internet services are now subject to the same laws and regulations as traditional banks.
According to an interview with Chinese media source Jiemian in 2015, Qiao was formerly a risk strategy management executive of Ant's micro-lending company. Ant, an offshoot of e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group Holding, which owns the South China Morning Post, canceled its IPO in Shanghai and Hong Kong barely 48 hours before trading was set to begin in November 2020.
Ant Shifts Away From Finance, Pivots To Technology
The cancellation marked the beginning of Beijing's 18-month regulatory assault on the country's internet sector, which has resulted in the loss of more than a trillion dollars in market value in associated equities.
Ant has recently shifted its focus away from finance and toward technology, indicating that the business is reaching the completion of a lengthy process to appease authorities.
The government recently signaled the end of the crackdown, with Chinese President Xi Jinping expressing support for the country's mobile payments and fintech platforms on Wednesday, which bodes well for Ant, the world's largest fintech business and operator of payment services behemoth Alipay.
The business reshuffled its board of directors recently, adding Laura Cha Shih May-lung - chairperson of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing and a member of the Hong Kong government's Executive Council - as an independent director, sparking speculation about the likely restart of Ant's IPO.
According to Alibaba's quarterly financial report issued this month, the business launched a digital bank in Singapore this month, its greatest international expansion since its botched IPO, and paid its first cash dividend to shareholders since bringing in investors in 2015.
According to a Bloomberg story earlier this month, Beijing had "initiated early stage conversations" on the resurrection of Ant's IPO, while Reuters claimed that China's central leadership had given Ant the "tentative green light" to relaunch its IPO preparations in Shanghai and Hong Kong.
The country's securities regulator, the China Securities Regulatory Commission, denied earlier this month that it was doing any review or study into Ant's IPO revival, and Ant also denied that it was seeking to resurrect the listings.
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