Hong Kong authorities are planning to issue digital banking licenses to Tencent, Ant Financial and Xiaomi; Goldman Sachs estimates there...
DBS Banks has been in the midst of changing the way the bank operates, culturally and competitively; they now find...
In 2015 China’s Central Bank contracted eight companies, including affiliates of Tencent, Ping An and Alibaba, to help build a...
Tencent and Alibaba have built firms that enable them to write significant checks and have crowded out private equity and venture capital firms; SoftBank is the only other regional player on a similar level; they are not always driven by returns like traditional investors and this allows them to define success differently; some private equity firms are beginning to wonder if they are beginning to abuse their power; if a company receives investment from one of these giants they are also not held to the same pressures of a traditional investor like going public; these giants are helping to push innovation across the region and globe, but many are starting to ask at what cost. Source.
German Digital bank N26 has raised $160mn to fund their U.S expansion plans; Tencent and Allianz were lead investors in the round and it could set the stage for a future IPO according to N26 co-founder and CEO Valentin Stalf; “It's a good round to be as independent as possible,” Stalf said to TechCrunch. “This funding round really brings N26 to a pre-IPO stage. I think we see a clear path to a very sustainable company with this funding round. Maybe in the next five years there will be an IPO.”; the bank currently has eight staff members in NY and customers have been signing up on the waiting list since October 2017. Source.
Mobile payments in China have taken off in recent years as Ant Financial and Tencent dominate the market; in recent...
China’s government has tried for many years to establish a credit system that rivals the U.S. and Europe, but has...
China has been looking to create a credit scoring system seen in many developed economies like the U.S. and the U.K.; initially asking 8 top companies to be involved, though they found it hard to form as companies were unwilling to share proprietary data with competitors; the PBoC is now tasked with having a industry wide system that does not favor giants like Alibaba and Tencent. Source.
Naspers is the most valuable listed company in Africa and is now selling $10 billion worth of shares in Tencent to invest in fintech, classified and online food delivery businesses; Naspers stake in Tencent is estimated at $545 billion; this is the first time the company has sold shares in the company after initially investing in 2001. Source
The Shenzhen Securities Regulatory Bureau issued the year’s first fund sales license to Tencent Holdings; the company will operate as Teng An Fund Sales; WeChat adds a police certified facial recognition technology as part of a pilot program they hope to roll out to all of China in late January; some loans on HNA’s p2p platform JBH have dealt with deferred payments a since November. Source.