Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Goldman Sachs joins Chinese financial technology firm Ant Group’s growing list of investment banks working on a massive $ 30 million initial public offering, two people with direct knowledge of the case.
Ant, backed by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, plans to list together in Hong Kong and Shanghai, which sources said could be the world’s largest IPO and could arrive as soon as October.
Wall Street chief Goldman Sachs has been hired as a joint lead manager on the IPO’s Hong Kong leg, people said, whose name was not authorized to speak to the media on the subject.
A Goldman Sachs spokesperson, who served as joint lead manager on Alibaba’s $ 12.9 billion secondary list in Hong Kong last year, declined to comment. The ant also declined to comment.
Ant’s IPO, already the world’s most valuable Unicorn – or billion-dollar unlisted tech firm – will be listed for the first time in Hong Kong and Shanghai’s year-to-year star market.
The Hong Kong leg of the IPO is being sponsored by China International Capital Corp, Citigroup, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley. Credit Suisse is working as a joint global coordinator.
The top-ranked banks in Hong Kong IPOs are known as sponsors and bear legal obligations for the accuracy of the prospectus. Under him is the Joint Global Coordinator, and at the bottom rung is the Joint Chief Manager.
Ant’s star market listing is led by CICC and China Securities Company
China’s largest brokerage, CITIC Securities, is scheduled to receive the role of a joint underwriter on the mainland trach, four people with knowledge of the matter said on Friday.
Ant’s mega IPO size means that a large syndicate of investment banks, especially those with a strong retail investor network, are expected to work on the deal as it moves toward a possible launch in October.
If Ant completes the offering at the upper end of expectations of around $ 30 billion, it would beat oil giant Saudi Aramco, which raised $ 29.4 billion in December last year, compared to Alibaba’s $ 25 billion in 2014. The record set by the float was exceeded.
According to market researcher Qianzan, Ant’s largest and best-known business is China’s largest player in the 430-trillion yuan ($ 62 trillion) third-party mobile payment market.
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