The company is continuing a large-scale restructuring initiated at the request of antitrust regulator SAMR in 2021.
Ant Group will undergo a new round of organizational restructuring to boost the independence of its international, database, and digital technology business segments, according to the chief executive of the Chinese financial technology giant.
The global, OceanBase DataBase, and digital tech segments have begun operating independently and established separate boards of directors with a CEO accountability system under their leadership, added Eric Jing, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Ant Group.
The organizational restructuring aims to further speed up reforms, promote Ant Group's three strategies of "Artificial Intelligence First," mobile payment platform Alipay technologies, and business development, and accelerated globalization, Jing pointed out.
Jing also noted that Ant Group's Chief Financial Officer Cyril Han has been appointed president and will be responsible for the digital payment, digital interconnection, and digital finance businesses.
As previously reported by Bloomberg, Ant Group, founded by Jack Ma, will spin off its blockchain and database services, as well as its international business, outside of the main organization. This will be done before applying for a financial holding company license in China, which will further pave the way for an IPO.
It should be recalled that Ant Group was supposed to go public on the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock exchanges back in November 2020, but the potentially largest IPO in history ($34.4 billion) was blocked by Chinese authorities. They later demanded that Ant Group "return to its roots" and focus on payment processing instead of more profitable business lines. In April 2021, market regulator SAMR levied a record fine of 18.22 billion yuan ($2.78 billion) on Ant Group's parent company Alibaba for violating antitrust laws and ordered a significant restructuring of Ant Group.
Source: Yicai Global
