Ant Group has reportedly reached a deal with Chinese authorities to become a financial holding company, making it subject to bank-like capital requirements.
Why it matters: The restructuring is likely to ease regulatory pressure for the fintech giant, but could also drastically alter its operations and curb its rapid pace of growth.
Details: Ant Group will be putting all of its business into a financial holding company, including all of its non-financial technology operations, such as its blockchain platform AntChain, Bloomberg reported.
- Previous reports said that Ant initially tried to only relegate business units that fall under the purview of financial regulators to the holding company, including consumer and small- to medium-sized business lending, wealth and asset management, insurance, digital payments, and MYBank, its licensed bank.
- An official announcement could come before the Spring Festival holiday, which starts on Feb. 11.
- Regulators are still ironing out the exact requirements for financial holding companies, after announcing the corporate framework in September.
- An Ant Group representative declined to comment.
- Share prices in New York for its e-commerce affiliate Alibaba on Wednesday rose 3.5% on the news.
Context: Since the suspension of Ant Group’s highly anticipated blockbuster dual public listings, it has been facing intense regulatory headwinds as Chinese authorities move to rein in fintech giants.
- Just last week, Ant Group removed all bank deposit products from its platform to appease authorities which deemed them too risky.
- On Jan. 21, China’s central bank released new antitrust rules for third-party digital payments providers that will likely hit Ant, among other fintech companies.
- JD.com’s fintech arm JD Digits also restructured in January, but took a different approach: It joined the finance unit with its artificial intelligence and cloud businesses into a new company called JD Technology.
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