In comments that capped off a disastrous week for Ant Group and Jack Ma, the group’s controlling shareholder and China’s richest man, China’s banking regulator suggested it would begin treating fintechs more like banks — a move that could drastically slash their valuations and attractiveness to investors, reported the Financial Times.
“In accordance with fintech’s financial nature, we will bring all financial activities under a unified scope of supervision,” Liu Fushou, chief legal counsel at the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, said on Friday.
The prospect of being forced to navigate a regulatory shake-up before it can even contemplate returning to the market is a shock for a group that was poised to hold the world’s largest initial public offering with a valuation of $316 billion, said the FT.
The new draft rules for online micro-lending state that internet platforms will have to provide 30% of the funding of “joint loans” — a term the regulators have yet to fully define — that are offered through their platforms.