The Shanghai stock exchange has halted Ant Group's IPO, which was set to go ahead this week, after finding that it may not meet regulatory requirements from talking with the company's top executives.
The company's Shanghai IPO was suspended on Tuesday night after Chinese regulators met with the company's top executives, including Jack Ma, Eric Jing, and Simon Hu. During the meeting, the regulators came to the decision that the Shanghai listing may no longer meet regulatory and disclosure requirements due to "recent changes in the fintech environment".
This then prompted Ant Group to also suspend its Hong Kong listing, which had been scheduled for Thursday, Ant Group said in a stock exchange notice[1].
"Ant Group was notified by the Shanghai Stock Exchange today that our A share listing plan on the Shanghai Stock Exchange would be suspended. Consequently, Ant has decided that the concurrent H share listing plan on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange shall also be suspended," the company said in a statement[2].
In the statement, Ant Group also apologised for any inconvenience that the suspensions have caused to investors.
"We will keep in close communications with the Shanghai Stock Exchange and relevant regulators, and wait for their further notice with respect to further developments of our offering and listing process and disclose in a timely manner."
The company, the owner of Alipay, had priced its shares at HK$80[3] and 68.8 yuan[4] apiece, respectively, for the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock exchanges.
Based on these share prices, Ant Group was seeking to raise about $17.2 billion in each city, according to the Wall Street Journal[5]. The $34.4 billion figure would have reportedly made it the biggest IPO