Tencent boss’s comments on Ant Financial IPO

As Ant Group’s IPO has been suspended last minute because of ‘changing regulatory environment”, a video of a press conference by Pony Ma, Chairman of Tencent, went viral.

In the video, a journalist from China Entrepreneurs magazine asked Ma (no relation fo Jack Ma of Alibaba) how he thought about Ant Financial and JD Finance (later renamed JD Digits) rushing to become the first major internet finance company to go for IPO.

“Whether Tencent has similar plans to spin off its Fintech business directly for the capital market?” the journalist asked.

Ma’s response went:

“We need to take a stable approach for financial services. The core issues of finance is stability.

“It is a fight of who can live longer, not run faster in the short term.

“For Tencent, part of the business is . Such as WeBank, which holds a banking licence, with different shareholders. So for some business lines we have that arrangement. However for the core business, including payment and wealth management, they are part of Tencent.

“We are not lumping everything into a so called financial group. Many financial businesses are tightly integrated with our main platform. There is really no need to spin off for the sake of spinning off. That is never our style or train of thought. 

“We will not show off how big our asset is. I think it is important for us to be grounded. After 2-3 years, all the tricks in the trade will be just obvious.

“Many told us hey you are falling behind – the others are doing a lot. I told them that it is never our style to show off a lot of tricks. Thank you”

This video was taken more than three years ago, in 2017.

Chinese speakers can watch the video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZH_oV3w1hc