Chinese giant Alibaba’s financial arm has raised a $4.5 billion in funding, it will be counted as the largest single private placement of the e-commerce company.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the development values Ant Financial Services Group at roughly $60 billion. Earlier the media had reported that the company was targeting at a $3.5 billion raise.
“The capital raised in series B will allow us to invest in the infrastructure, such as cloud computing and risk control, that will underpin our long-term growth in rural and international markets,” President, Ant Financial, Eric Jing, was quoted by AFP as saying.
Ant Financial, established in 2014, consolidated Alibaba’s entire finance business and gave it a single entity. It includes Alipay, which is the online payments arm and is estimated to hold around 80 per cent of the sector in China.
Alibaba’s Taobao reports more than 90 per cent of the consumer to consumer market in China, whereas Tmall commands around half of business-to-consumer transactions. The company was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014, raising around a $25 billion in the world’s biggest initial public offering. Founder Ma, the Executive Chairman of Alibaba is now China’s second richest person as per Bloomberg Billionaires.
