(Reuters) -The shares of listed Chinese companies with Ant Group as a major shareholders rose Monday after Ant founder Jack Ma announced that he would be leaving the fintech giant.
Hong Kong-listed shares of Ma’s Alibaba jumped more than 5%.
Longshine Technology Group Co Ltd shares, Jilin Zhengyuan Shanghai Golden Bridge Infotech Co and Orbbec Inc also rose. Ant holds a greater than 5% share in Hundsun Technologies.
Ant announced that Jack Ma, founder of the company will relinquish control over it this weekend.
This overhaul seeks to end a regulatory crackdown that was initiated soon after the stock market’s historic debut two years ago.
“Investors can stop guessing and can finally assign a risk premium to the new company that Ant was transformed to be,” said Alexander Sirakov, managing partner at Aquariusx, a Shanghai-based investment consultancy.
Analysts have suggested that a surrender of control could allow the company to restart its initial public offering (IPO). However, the controller changes announced Saturday are likely to cause a delay due to listing regulations.
China’s domestic A-share market requires companies to wait three years after a change in control to list. The wait is two years on Shanghai’s Nasdaq-style STAR market, and one year in Hong Kong.
Ant Group announced on Sunday that it doesn’t plan to start an IPO.
Ant’s $37 billion IPO, which would have been the world’s largest, was cancelled at the last minute in November 2020, leading to a forced restructuring of the financial technology firm and speculation the Chinese billionaire would have to cede control.
(Reporting by Roxanne Liu in Shanghai, Roxanne Yang in Beijing, and Yingzhi Yang at Kane Wu in Hong Kong; Editing done by Kim Coghill & Muralikumar anantharaman
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