Hong Kong (CNN Business)Jack Ma’s Ant Group has just pulled off the biggest stock market listing in history.
The tech company behind China’s largest online payments platform priced its dual listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and Shanghai’s Star Market at 80 Hong Kong dollars ($10.32) and 68 yuan ($10.13) per share respectively, according to regulatory filings released Monday.That means the IPO will raise over $34.1 billion and value the company at about $310 billion. The previous record for a stock-market listing was held by Saudi state oil company Aramco, which raised $29.4 billion in an offering on the Riyadh exchange last December.
The listing is a win for China which has been encouraging the country’s top tech companies to list at home instead of on top exchanges in the United States.Ant is splitting the IPO evenly between Hong Kong and Shanghai, selling 1.67 billion shares on each exchange. The shares to be issued are equivalent to about 11% of the company.Read MoreAnt is the financial technology company affiliated with Chinese e-commerce group Alibaba (BABA), which went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014 in what was also a world-record setting IPO. Billionaire Ma has ultimate control over Ant.Ant is one of the biggest technology firms in the world and the biggest online payments platform in China. The app has established its presence in every aspect of financial life in China, from investment accounts and micro savings products to insurance, credit scores and even dating profiles.
The firm’s payments app Alipay had 731 million monthly active users as of September, Ant said in regulatory filings. The platform handled 118 trillion yuan ($17.7 trillion) in payments in the 12 months through June.The company said revenue for the nine months ended in September rose about 43% to 118.2 billion yuan ($17.7 billion) compared to the same period last year. Gross profit for the period rose 74% to 69.5 billion yuan ($10.4 billion).
Source: edition.cnn.com