BEIJING / HONG KONG (Reuters) – China’s ant group is working on measures to help staff with “short-term liquidity problems,” its chief executive said in internal messages after the $ 37 billion fintech IPO was shut down , which shattered the employees’ hopes by collecting their shares.
The listing of the affiliate of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding in November last year would have made some of the company’s employees millionaires or billionaires.
Eric Jing told Ant employees last week that the company will review its staffing programs and launch several measures starting in April to help solve their financial problems, according to two people who saw the messages.
Some Ant employees recently expressed frustration on social media because they could not sell the shares of the company they own after Chinese regulators abruptly stopped Ant’s double listing, which was supposed to be the largest in Ant. world in November.
Jing commented in response to employees’ questions about Ant’s future on the company’s website, said people, who refused to be named because they were not allowed to speak to the media.
The company’s share repurchase program for employees was stopped in July last year due to the initial planned public offering, said one of the people, who would have given them the opportunity to monetize their holdings.
Ant declined to comment.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the news.
“Our company will definitely become a public company and I am very confident in that,” Jing said in internal messages. “Our preparatory work will not stop.”
Ant is currently working on plans to move to a financial holding structure following intense regulatory pressure and to restrict some of its operations and subject them to rules and capital requirements similar to those for banks.
However, a business structure of the group means that the company could continue with the IPO in two years, Reuters reported.
“This rectification will not make Ant weak, but will make us healthier, with a higher stage of growth,” Jing said, without revealing the details of the restructuring plan.
Reporting by Yingzhi Yang in Beijing and Sumeet Chatterjee in Hong Kong; Additional reporting by the Beijing editorial office; Susan Fenton Mountain