Alibaba’s Ant Financial to be restructured

Alibaba already had to accept a hefty fine for violating the anti-monopoly law (China.Table reported) these days. On Monday, the second strike against the world’s largest online trading platform followed: Beijing ordered the conversion of Alibaba’s financial arm Ant Financial into a normal financial holding company. This means that in the future, Ant Financial will be subject to the state financial supervisory authorities like a regular bank and will have to comply with stricter rules. This includes, for example, that Ant must maintain the same liquidity as a bank. This was announced by central bank vice director Pan Gongsheng after a meeting of China’s banking and securities regulators with Ant Group’s management in Beijing. Ant applied for the conversion as recently as Monday.