Beijing wants to reduce Jack Ma’s technological and financial empire and potentially have a bigger stake in its business, according to Chinese officials and government advisers familiar with the issue, as regulators approach the billionaire in a campaign to strengthen supervision of an increasingly influential country. technological sphere.
According to a restructuring roadmap that China’s financial regulators set out this week, financial technology giant Ant Group Co. it would return to its roots as an online payment provider similar to PayPal Holdings Inc., while reducing its more profitable investment and lending businesses. .
Regulators, led by the central bank, also ordered Ant to form an independent financial holding company that would be subject to the type of capital requirements applied to banks. This could open a door for large state-owned banks or other types of government-controlled entities to enter the firm to help strengthen their capital base, officials and advisers say.
The National Pension Fund of China, the Development Bank of China and China International Capital Corp., the country’s leading state-owned investment bank, are already investors in Ant.
Mr. Ma, China’s richest person, has helped define China’s new economy with the two companies he founded: Ant and its e-commerce subsidiary Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Its businesses include payment services, online retail, cloud computing, asset management and lending. Separately, Alibaba is facing an antitrust probe that could also lead to a review of business and asset divestments.