Ant Financial Services Group, a financial services firm affiliated with Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd., is reportedly planning an initial public offering in Hong Kong next year to raise at least US$10 billion.
The online payment and financial services firm is in talks with investment banks including Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and unnamed Chinese investment banks, targeting an IPO during the first half of 2017.
Ant Financial denied the media reports and said the company has not decided on where it will list.
In April, Ant Financial raised US$4.5 billion in a series B financing at a valuation of around US$60 billion led by CIC International, the Chinese sovereign wealth fund's international investment arm, and a unit of China Construction Bank.
Other early backers of Ant Financial include some of China's top state-backed entities: National Social Security Fund, China Life Insurance (Group) Co., Postal Savings Bank of China, CDB (China Development Bank) Capital and Primavera Capital.
Ant Financial is behind Alipay, a leading online and mobile payment serviced used by 450 active users in China. It took a 68.4% market share in the country's mobile payment sector in 2015, according to iResearch.
The company also operates Yu'ebao, an online savings and wealth management platform, as well as offering microloan, personal credit, online banking, O2O (online-to-offline) and other financial services.
In 2014, Alibaba chose to list in New York instead of its first choice Hong Kong, because the Hong Kong Stock Exchange wouldn't yield to its partnership structure that gives founding partners control of the company board.
Ant Financial will not face the same issue but still need to resolve some regulatory challenges, including obtaining approval for receiving foreign investment as the result of a policy that require Chinese non-bank payment companies to be licensed.