Ant Group’s IPO sees record $3tr
Retail investors placed bids for a record $3 trillion of shares in Ant Group Company Limited’s initial public offering (IPO), set to be the world’s biggest, as mom-and-pop savers bet on demand for its financial services in China. Ant’s dual listing is set to raise about $34.4 billion, split fairly evenly between Shanghai’s STAR Market and Hong Kong, topping Saudi Aramco’s $29.4 billion listing last December. Investors, both retail and institutional, are rushing to buy into Ant, which operates China’s biggest payments platform and other financial services, despite risks of greater scrutiny at home and abroad. The Shanghai leg of the IPO drew about 19 trillion yuan ($2.8 trillion) of bids from retail investors, or 872 times the number of shares earmarked for them, a company filing to the stock exchange showed on Thursday.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 1st, 2020.
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