Your Uncle Is Still Your Uncle: Ant Pulls Its IPO

(Image Source: Alex Plavevski/EPA-EFE)

What happened: In a shock move, Ant Group pulled its record-breaking IPO from the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchanges, on the evening of November 3rd—two days before its stock was supposed to start trading. 

The public story: The Shanghai stock exchange said the IPO was pulled because new regulations had been introduced which affected Ant’s personal loans product line. But given the highly anticipated nature of the IPO, and given that it's China, no one believes that's the full story.

The timeline:

Here's a tough timeline of events: on October 23rd, Jack Ma gave a speech at a conference in Shanghai. In the speech, he lambasted traditional banks and scoffed at the notion that fintech companies posed a systemic risk to China's financial system (currently a popular discussion in China). Rather, he argued, financial regulators' excessive focus on controlling risks could stifle innovation. The speech made waves on the Chinese internet and was considered unusually pointed in its criticism.

On November 3rd, Ma and other top Ant executives were suddenly pulled into a joint "interview" with representatives from four major regulatory commissions in China— the People’s Bank of China, China Banking Regulatory Commission, China Securities Regulatory Commission, and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange.

After that meeting the Ant IPO was pulled, with the Shanghai Stock Exchange citing new regulations affecting Ant’s personal loans product line.

What really happened:

Learn more

This post is for
paying subscribers

Subscribe →

Or, login.

Read this next:

Napkin Math

How Costco Convinces Brands to Cannibalize Themselves

An unlikely marriage where both sides win

188 Jul 15, 2020 by Adam Keesling

Napkin Math

Substack Rhymes With Medium

Substack can't decide if it's a CMS or a media brand. Neither could Medium. Their indecision will likely lead to similar outcomes.

202 Sep 26, 2020 by Adam Keesling

Napkin Math

The Addiction Economy

Addicted, Overwhelmed, Oversubscribed: How Technology Hooked the World

137 🔒 May 26, 2022 by Evan Armstrong

Napkin Math

How AI Changes the Media Business

Why community and social network effects will be key to winning the future

64 Mar 23, 2023 by Evan Armstrong

The Sunday Digest

A Copilot for the Mind, SVB’s Explosion, LLMs are the new CPUs, and More

Everything we published this week!

13 Mar 19, 2023

Understand AI

Get one actionable essay a day on AI, tech, and personal development

Subscribe

Already a subscriber? Login