Chinese state pulls brake on Jack Ma's plan to create world's biggest Fintech firm

New Delhi: The Chinese state has pulled the brake on the ANT group, which could have been the biggest Fintech Company in the world.
The ANT group is a Fintech organization, controlled by China’s richest person, Jack Ma, who is also the co-founder of Alibaba Group. He wanted to make the ANT group public, and raise as much as 37 billion dollars simultaneously. This would have been the biggest IPO, or first sale of stock in the world - greater than the listing of Saudi’s Aramco.
At the eleventh hour, however, the initiative received a huge blow from the Chinese authorities as the Government suspended the public listing of the company abruptly. This caused a severe setback to Jack Ma, who is one of the most admired entrepreneurs in China, and also a member of the Communist Party.

According to sources, this was done to reduce Jack Ma’s powers, economical and political. It intended to send message to its people – nobody in the country will be allowed to go big unless it is the will of the Government.

ANT is the budgetary arm of internet business goliath Alibaba and began in 2004 as the website's approach to handle payments. ANT’s Alipay application has more than 730 million monthlyusers in China who use it to do financial transactions. ANT's administrations likewise incorporate insurance, credits and asset management.

ANT was at first walking towards its November 5 IPO and pulling in a great deal of investors all the while – it had some $3 trillion in orders for its dual listing in Hong Kong and Shanghai. ANT’s IPO was relied upon to try and shroud the $29bn IPO for Saudi Arabia's oil monster Aramco, so far, the world's greatest public offer deal.

However, at a press conference just a few weeks ago on October 24, Jack Ma criticized the Chinese Financial regulatory system. He called it outdated and said that the “financial regulators seem a kind of club for the elderly who want to play it too safe, something that is not good for “youth” economies like China’s.”

He strongly criticized the financial regulators for being extremely cautious and said that “there is no innovation in this world without risk.” According to Ma,China’s banks behaved like “pawnshops” and lent only to those who had the capability to put up collateral.

Jack Ma’s comments came just a few hours after the conference’s keynote speaker, Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan, declared that China would “keep away from the wrongful paths of excessive speculation, self-reinforcing cycles of financial bubbles and Ponzi schemes.”

Ma’s innocuous statements resulted in drastic steps by the fascist Chinese regime, which cannot handle criticism from its people. His comments were not taken down well by the Chinese Government. Ma was also called to Beijing for a meeting with Government officials on November 2, immediately following which, ANT was pulled out of Shanghai Stock Exchange.

This is not the first time that China has lashed out upon its critics. Earlier this year former Chair of the state-owned Beijing Huayuan Group Co. Ltd, Ren Zhiqiang, was sentenced to 18 years in prison for criticizing the Chinese Government and its poor handling of the pandemic. He also dared to refer to Xi Jinping as a “clown.”

With no tolerance to freedom of speech and expression of individuals and curtailment of dissent and criticism, the despotism in China is growing to hurt its own economy.

By making Jack Ma pay a hefty price for his comments against China’s truly outdated financial regulatory system, the Chinese Government has clearly proved the point that it is either its way or the highway. China is not afraid to step in and take radical measures to ensure absolute submission of its citizens.

But little does China realize that such unfortunate decisions have the potential to drive away the global investors from investing in China, strengthening the country’s undercurrent full of more shame, anger and angst.