Chinese fintech giant Ant announces share buyback after crackdown

BEIJING: Chinese fintech giant Ant Group announced on Saturday a share buyback plan to allow some investors to offload or reduce their stakes after the government slapped the firm with a $1 billion fine for alleged “illegal acts”.

Ant operates Alipay, the world’s largest digital payments platform, which boasts hundreds of millions of monthly users in China and beyond.

It was one of the most prominent targets of a sweeping crackdown on the country’s tech sector that is now drawing to a close.

Ant said it aims to repurchase up to 7.6 percent of its equity.

The share buyback plan values Ant Group at 567.1 billion yuan ($78.5 billion), less than a quarter of the company’s whopping $315 billion valuation when it tried to list in Hong Kong in 2020.

“The repurchased shares will be transferred into Ant Group’s employee incentive plans to attract talents,” the company said.

“The repurchase proposal will also provide a liquidity option for the company’s investors.”

The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) on Friday slapped a $984 million fine on Ant and its subsidiaries “in view of... illegal and irregular acts”.

The penalty “included the confiscation of illegal income”, the regulator said.

“At present, most of the outstanding problems in the financial business of platform enterprises have been rectified,” it added.

In recent years, Ant has expanded into offering loans, credit, investments and insurance to hundreds of millions of consumers and small businesses.

The government has sought to rein in runaway personal debt and chaotic lending in the private sector, and upstart Ant’s growing profile was widely viewed as a challenge to vested interests in the country’s state-dominated financial sphere.