It had been defined “the mother of all IPOs” or “the biggest IPO ever” and all those formulas that are normally used to describe something really big. We are talking about the listing of Ant Group , a company specializing in digital payments and initially scheduled for Thursday 5 November. “Initially” is the key word: China has in fact decided to suspend the listing of Ant Group, with which the company had planned to sell the 11% of its shares for a valuation of 34, 4 billion dollars.

We talk about it because Ant Group was born from Alipay , the digital payment arm of Alibaba born in 2011 and subsequently separated. Jack Ma , founder of Alibaba, is the main shareholder of Ant Group and the two companies have always maintained relationships privileged.

Stop the biggest IPO ever: Jack Ma’s Ant Group

The Shanghai Stock Exchange has notified that it had pointed out to Ma, some “important problems” that could have led to the freezing of the listing for the lack of the necessary requirements. Among the problems also some changes in the “regulatory environment of financial technology”.

On Monday 2 November the Chinese authorities summoned Jack Ma, the president of Ant Group Eric Jin and the CEO Simon Hu . Although the reasons for the meeting are not entirely clear, the authorities would nevertheless have announced that they wanted to start a more careful review of the group’s financial activities, as well as determining new restrictions on lending activities that would be in direct competition with those of the traditional banking system. The move by the authorities of the People’s Republic is therefore configured as the desire to establish a more rigid regulatory framework for those large entities that now populate the sector fintech Chinese.

Currently Alipay can count on over 1.2 billion users worldwide, operating on over 50 different markets. But Ant Financial also offers current account, insurance and asset management services in direct competition with banks. The spread of the Covid pandemic – 19 then prompted the company to activate credit lines for small activities and to increase consumer credit. A competition, that towards the banking system, which Beijing obviously does not look favorably upon.

Ant Group has made it known that it is ready to acknowledge the opinions expressed during the meeting even if, as mentioned, there are no further details on the subject of the call. However, the crux of the matter seems to concern microloan activities and in particular new capital requirements to be able to grant them, as well as new licenses for operations on a national scale.