CNN
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Chinese billionaire Jack Ma will no longer control Ant Group after the fintech giant’s shareholders agreed to revamp its share structure, the company said in a statement on Saturday.
After the adjustment, Ma’s voting rights would drop to 6.2%, according to the statement and CNN calculations.
According to its 2020 IPO prospectus filed with stock exchanges, before the restructuring, Ant held 50.52% of the voting rights in Hangzhou Yunbo and two other entities.
Ant said in a statement that the adjustment of voting rights to make the company’s shareholder structure “more transparent and diverse” will not affect the economic interests of any shareholders.
Ant said its 10 major shareholders, including Ma, had agreed to no longer participate in concert, and that they would only exercise their voting rights and vote independently, so that no single shareholder would have sole or joint control over Ant Group.
The amendment to voting rights comes after Chinese regulators pulled Ant’s $37 billion IPO in November 2020 and ordered the company to overhaul its operations.
As part of the company’s restructuring, Ant applied to expand its registered capital from $1.2 billion to $2.7 billion. The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission recently approved the application, according to a government announcement late last week.
After the fundraising drive, Ant will control half of the major consumer finance division, with a 10% stake controlled by the Hangzhou city government. Hangzhou is where Alibaba and Ant have been headquartered since their inception.
Ant Group is Alibaba’s fintech partner, both of which are
