Ant Group, formerly known as Ant Financial, the creator of Alipay, has said that it is planning to do dual IPOs in Hong Kong and Shanghai; this means the world’s most valuable fintech company will not seek to raise money in New York instead going with China’s one-year-old Nasdaq competitor STAR market as well as the Hong Kong stock exchange; with increasing trade tensions between the United States and China the company is seeking to list closer to home; this is unlike Alibaba, Ant’s former parent company, which raised a then record $25 billion on the New York Stock Exchange back in 2014; Ant was last valued at $150 billion in a 2018 funding round but it is tight-lipped about potential IPO valuations; Alipay now has more than 900 million active users in China who use the app for everything from online investing to paying for groceries and utility bills. The Wall Street Journal.
