Jack Ma’s Ant Group set for record $34bn stock market listing

Jack Ma’s Ant Group set for record $34bn stock market listing

Publishedduration18 minutes ago

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image captionJack Ma's Ant shares are reportedly worth $17bn

Chinese financial technology giant Ant Group looks set to make the world's largest stock market debut.

Ant, backed by Jack Ma, billionaire founder of e-commerce platform Alibaba, is to sell shares worth about $34.4bn (£26.5bn) on the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock markets.

Advisers to Ant set the share price on Monday amid reports of very strong demand from major investors.

The previous largest debut was Saudi Aramco's $29.4bn float last December.

Ant, an online payments business, is only selling about 11% of its shares. But the pricing values the whole business at about $313bn.

Mr Ma's Ant shares are reportedly worth about $17bn, taking his net worth to close to $80bn and confirming him as China's richest man.

Ant runs Alipay, the