Ma 'offered parts of Ant' in vain bid to save IPO

Alibaba cofounder Jack Ma Yun offered to hand over parts of his financial-technology giant Ant Group to Beijing in a meeting early last month before affliate Ant Group was supposed to go public, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing insiders.

"You can take any of the platforms Ant has, as long as the country needs it," Ma proposed at an unusual sit-down with regulators on November 2, they said.

But his olive-branch offer at the meeting failed to save the initial public offering, the report said.

The Shanghai Stock Exchange pulled the plug on what could have been the world's largest ever initial public offering two days before the scheduled debut on November 5. That also prompted Ant Group to put on hold the Hong Kong leg of its dual listing.

The dramatic reversal came after Jack Ma Yun and other top Ant Group executives were summoned to a meeting on November 2 with the central bank and the securities, banking and foreign exchange watchdogs.

Ahead of the flotation of Ant Group, which in the first half derived 39.4 percent of revenue from its consumer and small businesses lending division, China's financial regulators issued draft rules to tighten their grip on online microlending.

Apart from a failure to meet regulatory requirements, market watchers have also put forward many theories to explain why Beijing abruptly pushed back what could be the biggest share offering in history.

One of the most popular is that Ma was on a collision course with China's top regulators, with the Journal attributing that to a speech Ma delivered in late October in which he reportedly said the government of President Xi Jinping negatively affected innovation.

The mega deal would have raised around HK$264 billion in total and attracted 6.7 million people to place about HK$23.6 trillion for the shares.

Beijing has since stepped up efforts to rein in China's big tech giants.

China's antitrust watchdog, the State Administration for Market Regulation, fined Alibaba (9988), Tencent (0700)-backed China Literature (0772) and express locker system operator Shenzhen Hive Box Technology 500,000 yuan (HK$592,248) each last Monday for failing to report past buyout deals.

This came after the top decision-making body of the Chinese Communist Party vowed to step up antitrust efforts on December 11.