Ant Group, the fintech arm of Alibaba and parent company of Alipay, will create dozens of billionaires and plenty of multimillionaires with its upcoming IPO.
On July 20, Ant Group announced the launch of its plans to go public in both Shanghai and Hong Kong with a dual listing.
"I heard that cheers just appeared in the office building where Ant is located, this is the sound of freedom of wealth," a screenshot of a conversation spread widely on WeChat.
According to media reports, people familiar with Ant Group said that Ant's internal employee ownership is about 40 percent, excluding executives.
Ant Group currently has 32 shareholders, with Alibaba as the largest shareholder with a 33% stake. Two shareholding plans for Alibaba and Ant's employees hold 28.45% and 21.53% of shares respectively. The three together hold nearly 83% of the shares.
The average number of shares held by Ant's employees at P7 level is around 30,000 to 40,000 shares.
Even if they are not listed, they are worth around 10 million yuan at the current privately traded share price.
For those joining Ant from the company's day one, basically all of them have achieved financial freedom. Among them, there would be at least 60 who could have assets exceeding 100 million yuan.
Ant Group started out as Alipay, which was founded in 2004, and was officially launched in October 2014.
In 2014, Alibaba consolidated its related financial products and formally established Ant Financial.
On July 13, Alibaba released its fiscal year 2020 report showing that Jack Ma holds about 8.8% of Ant's shares and has 50% voting rights.
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