Alibaba founder Jack Ma and his trusty advisers have pulled off a coup in gaining a $150bn valuation for Ant Financial ahead of a mooted listing next year.
It is easy to see how the pitch to investors went. Fintech group Ant, having rewritten the way the world’s most populous country pays for goods and services, boasts more than half of China’s $15.5tn payments market and is making inroads overseas. Throw in some heroic assumptions, a China-inflated multiple, and you quickly get to $150bn.
But it is also easy to see what did not make the slide deck — there is no shortage of factors that should give pause to investors. Ant occupies a legal limbo, its founding chairperson is leaving, regulatory scrutiny is increasing and profits are being squeezed by competition.