China Pushes For Ant Group Overhaul In Latest Crackdown On Jack Ma

China’s central bank disclosed on Sunday it had asked the country’s payments giant Ant Group to shake up its lending and other consumer finance operations, the latest blow to its billionaire founder and controlling shareholder Jack Ma. The announcement came more than a month after Chinese regulators abruptly suspended Ant’s blockbuster $37 billion initial public offering in Shanghai and Hong Kong, and only days after the country’s antitrust authorities said they had launched a probe into Ma’s e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba Group Holding.

Chinese regulators and Communist Party officials have set about reining in Ma’s sprawling financial empire after he publicly criticized the country’s regulatory system in October for stifling innovation. Regulators have urged Ant to rectify financial regulatory violations, including in its credit, insurance and wealth management businesses, and overhaul its credit rating business to protect personal information, People’s Bank of China (PBOC) Vice Governor Pan Gongsheng said on Sunday. Mr Pan’s comments stopped short of calling for a breakup of Ant, yet pointed to a significant operational restructuring.

Ant should set up a separate holding company to ensure capital adequacy and regulatory compliance, Mr Pan said. Ant should also be fully licensed to operate its personal credit business, and be more transparent about its third-party payment transactions and not engage in unfair competition, Mr Pan added. Ant said in a statement it would establish a “rectification” working group and fully implement regulatory requirements. Ma was advised by the Chinese government to stay in the country, Bloomberg News has reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Ma could not be reached for comment. Mr Pan said Ant representatives met on Saturday with officials from the PBOC and other Chinese banking, securities and foreign exchange regulators. During the meeting, regulators pointed out Ant’s issues including its poor corporate governance, defiance of regulatory demands, illegal regulatory arbitrage, the use of its market advantage to squeeze out competitors, and harming consumers’ legal interests, according to Mr Pan. Ant was launched in 2004 and is 33 per cent owned by Alibaba.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Top features why a dedicated WordPress hosting is best for your website

Dedicated servers are often looked upon as over-expensive web hosting solutions. You may consider them an overkill for your business, but there is no denying the fact that they are the best hosting solution out there. Today, we will tell you some features of a dedicated WordPresshosting that makesit the best for your business. Reliability This is the key factor why most businesses choose a dedicated WordPress server hosting to host their website. A dedicated WordPress hosting server is administered and maintained by a team of professionals who provide online support and work towards optimising the performance of the server. Unlike shared and VPS hosting plans which give you access to limited resources, dedicated server hosting provides a good hosting support. This in turn increases the reliability. Scalability Every business aims to grow their customer base and increase revenues. However, with the limited resources provided by theshared hosting, it can be challenging to handle the high...
Read more

Elon Musk's "Use Signal" Post Spurred Massive Rally For The Wrong One

A two-word app recommendation from Elon Musk has turned into a massive rally in the shares of a tiny medical device company in another case of mistaken identity. “Use Signal,” the Tesla Inc. chief executive officer wrote on Twitter on Jan. 7, apparently referring to the encrypted messaging service. By the end of the day, Signal Advance Inc. shares had surged more than sixfold. That was enough to push Signal Advance’s rally more than 5,100% in three trading days giving it a market valuation of $390 million. Despite reports about the confusion on Friday, the stock has continued to rally. Shares of the Rosharon, Texas-based company surged as much as 885% on Monday before paring the gains. “We strongly recommend people do their due diligence and always invest with care,” the company’s chief executive officer, Dr. Chris Hymel, said when reached by phone on Monday. Signal Advance doesn’t have an association with Musk or the Signal app, he said. Signal...
Read more

RBI Policy: MPC may keep policy rate unchanged at 6%; owl may sound hawkish

N- Urjit Patel, Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), and his five colleagues on the Monetary Policy Committee will not find it too hard to keep the key policy interest rate unchanged at the upcoming policy review on February 7. The 2-day deliberations on February 6 and 7 by the MPC on the repo rate decision are expected to remain tilted towards a pause mode, keeping the near term outlook hawkish. However, they may raise rates later given the risks of higher inflation with fiscal slippages and higher food prices with the government planning to increase the Minimum Support Price (MSP). In the Budget last week, the government promised to ensure MSP of key crops at 1.5 times the cost of production. This could mean at least a 50-70-basis-points increase in the headline inflation number. While banks and bond markets have already signaled the end of the interest rate easing cycle, the MPC may keep the repo rate unchanged at 6 percent. Inflation risks Although, experts suggest the infl...
Read more