Jack Ma-backed Ant Group Co. is proposing to buy back as much as 7.6% of shares in an effort to retain talent and provide a chance to cut stakes for investors ensnared by a years-long regulatory crackdown at the company.
Each investor would be allowed to sell up to 7.6% of their equity rather than cashing out completely, according to a person familiar with the matter, asking not be identified discussing private details of the arrangement.
Ant’s planned repurchase of the equity would value the company at about 567.1 billion yuan ($78.5 billion), it said in a statement on Saturday. That is almost 70% lower than the $280 billion market capitalization it fetched in 2020 for the scrapped initial public offering.
Read the full story on Bloomberg here.