The executive chairman of Ant Group Co., faced with employee discontent, said the Chinese financial technology giant would eventually go public and that the company would look for ways to help workers earn income from some of its actions.
In a lengthy statement on Ant’s internal website, in response to an employee’s post asking about the company’s future and how it plans to retain talent, President Eric Jing said the company’s management company is reviewing its compensation policy and incentives and working on a “short-term liquidity” solution “for employees that would take effect in April, according to people who saw the note. The solution will likely be a program to recoup some of the employees ’actions, according to people close to the company.
Employee morale has been low in Ant since Chinese regulators forced the company to cancel its initial box office offers in Hong Kong and Shanghai in early November.
Many of Ant’s more than 16,000 workers had received stock-based compensation, and were on the cusp of picking up the benefits from Ant’s list, which the company had valued at more than $ 300 billion last fall. This doubled Ant’s valuation since mid-2018, when its last round of private fundraising valued the company at $ 150 billion.
Instead, the owner of the popular payment network Alipay has been forced to restructure its business, back riskier activities and fully comply with financial regulations that are likely to affect its growth and profitability. Investors and analysts expect Ant to have a lower valuation as a result, and the company plans to reform its business to become a financial company that would be overseen by the Chinese central bank.