The Ant Group is slated to go public with a valuation around $200bn, which makes it the world’s highest valued...
CB Insights outlines five tech giants' notable investments, partnerships and M&A moves in the Southeast Asia region; the five tech giants included in the article are Alibaba, Ant Financial, Tencent, Didi Chuxing and JD.com; the article highlights Ant Financial's investments in Singapore, Thailand, Philippines and Malaysia, as well as its strategic partnerships throughout Southeast Asia. Source
Alibaba spin-off Ant Financial and non profit online lender QCash won the second annual FT fintech awards; they were selected from a group of over 200 companies in the fintech space and the winners were announced at the FT Banking Summit; both companies were rewarded for innovation and providing increased access to financial services. Source.
In this conversation, we chat with Richard Turrin – an award-winning executive, previously heading FinTech teams at IBM, following a twenty-year career, heading trading teams at global investment banks. He’s also the author of the number one international bestseller, Innovation Lab Excellence. One of his books is Cashless: China’s Digital Currency Revolution, which brings the story of China’s incredible new central bank digital currency to the west. He lives in Shanghai, China, where he’s had the privilege of living in China’s cashless revolution firsthand.
After a yearlong battle trying to convince US regulators about their acquisition of MoneyGram, Alibaba’s Ant Financial called off the deal; having a significant presence in the US is the one area that Alibaba head Jack Ma has yet to succeed; the $1.2bn deal would have helped to establish their Alipay product immediately; this looks to potentially ratchet up trade issues between the two countries as the new administration has taken an aggressive stance towards China. Source.
The fund, which was set up as storage for excess cash from online spending, has now reached $165.6 billion in assets under management; this now exceeds the amount of JP Morgan's largest money market fund which is $150 billion; since the fund is so big it allows Ant Financial, Alibaba affiliate, to negotiate better rates with banks for capital; while many believe the likes of Google and Facebook could enter the market they have yet to do so. Source
Tencent and Alibaba have built firms that enable them to write significant checks and have crowded out private equity and venture capital firms; SoftBank is the only other regional player on a similar level; they are not always driven by returns like traditional investors and this allows them to define success differently; some private equity firms are beginning to wonder if they are beginning to abuse their power; if a company receives investment from one of these giants they are also not held to the same pressures of a traditional investor like going public; these giants are helping to push innovation across the region and globe, but many are starting to ask at what cost. Source.
In 2015 JD Finance recommended using the term "fintech" and in December of 2016 Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, coined "techfin"; the use of techfin showed Ant Financial's focus on building technology instead of products; the article explores whether the two concepts of fintech and techfin are actually different and the business models of JD Finance and Ant Financial. Source
While Alibaba’s Sesame Credit has increased access to loans in China the government recently told them to stop a national rollout of the program; John Gapper from the FT writes that there are three main issues behind social credit scores in China; technology companies have a more liberal attitude than banks when it comes to data; social credit scores seem to promote spending and more credit where as a traditional FICO score rewards a user for self control; the scores are proprietary to the companies who created them like Alibaba did with Sesame Credit. Source.
The People’s Bank of China has recently launched a trial version of their digital currency which they hope will reduce...