SHANGHAI -- Ant Group, the fintech affiliate of Chinese e-commerce leader Alibaba Group Holding, is looking to raise a record $30 billion in its planned IPO, Chinese financial and business news media group Caixin reported on Monday.
According to "sources with knowledge of the matter" quoted by Caixin, Ant is planning to sell 10% of the shares in Shanghai and 5% in Hong Kong.
Ant Group, formerly Ant Financial, has been valued at between $150 billion and $200 billion. Caixin's sources use the $200 billion valuation, putting the value of 15% of shares at roughly $30 billion.
That total would be slightly higher than the largest-ever initial public offering by Saudi Arabia's state oil company Saudi Aramco, which raised $29.4 billion between December 2019 and January this year.
Ant declined to comment on the matter to the Nikkei Asian Review.
On July 20, the Alibaba spinoff said that it would seek a dual listing on in Shanghai's Nasdaq-style STAR board as well as the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. It did not disclose the size of its planned IPO nor the timing in that statement.
Ant runs Alibaba's mobile wallet, Alipay, and offers financial products to Alipay users. It has also allowed merchants in China to build their digital operation within the Alipay app, seeking to keep users within its payment ecosystem amid rising market competition, and direct new customers to other services such as cloud computing and big data.
