HONG KONG • There is no shortage of superlatives for Ant Group's initial public offering (IPO). Here is a look at some of the key metrics, and why billionaire Jack Ma seems to be such a fan of the number eight.
IPO: US$34.5 BILLION
Ant's US$34.5 billion (S$46.9 billion) IPO blows past the previous record, set last year by Saudi Aramco at US$29 billion. Ant's fund raising exercise is expected to jump another US$5.2 billion once bankers sell additional shares to meet demand in what is known as the greenshoe option. The accompanying chart of the 10 biggest IPOs also reflects the growing economic clout of Asia. The top five are all from Asia or the Middle East, and eight of the 10 are from the region, including Mr Ma's online giant Alibaba Group Holding and Japan's SoftBank Group.
VALUATION: US$315 BILLION
Ant's IPO puts the company's valuation at dizzying heights. At about US$315 billion, Ant is worth more than the gross domestic products of Egypt, Chile or Finland. For corporate comparisons, it is bigger than JPMorgan Chase, the biggest bank in the United States. Ant is larger than its payment rival Paypal, media giant Walt Disney and dwarfs Bank of America. It is three times bigger than tech giant IBM and four times larger than Goldman Sachs.
LUCKY NUMBER 8
Mr Ma appears to be a big fan of the No. 8, which is often associated with wealth in China. Eight is pronounced "ba" and rhymes with the word for "prosperity" or "getting rich" in Mandarin. As a result, couples often try to get married in August, the eighth month, while eight is also a popular number for street addresses and apartment floors. The opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics began at 8pm on Aug 8.
Ant is knee-deep in eight. The stock ticker in Shanghai will be 688688; in Hong Kong it is 6688. Six is also considered a lucky number in China. The shares were priced in Shanghai at 68.8 yuan and at HK$80 in Hong Kong. Mr Ma's Alibaba Group, which owns about a third of Ant, trades under the ticker 9988 in Hong Kong. The focus on eight seems to be working for Mr Ma. Alibaba has soared since its Hong Kong listing last year, up 69 per cent, trouncing the Hang Seng index, which is down 8 per cent over that period.
76 BILLION SHARES
Ant's IPO was expected to attract investors from all over the world and that has borne out in the demand for shares. Institutional investors put in orders for 76 billion shares, more than 284 times the initial offering, according to the Shanghai filing. Brokers were willing to lend individual investors credit worth 20 times their investment so they could load up on the shares. Ant is planning to stop taking investor orders for the Hong Kong leg a day earlier than scheduled as the share sale has already been heavily subscribed, according to people familiar with the matter.
MA'S FORTUNE
Mr Ma, a former English teacher, co-founded Alibaba in 1999 with US$60,000, and he is poised to become the world's 11th-richest person after the Ant IPO.
His 8.8 per cent stake is worth US$27.4 billion based on the stock pricing in Hong Kong and Shanghai. That will lift the 56-year-old's fortune to US$71.6 billion on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, exceeding that of Oracle's Larry Ellison, L'Oreal heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers and individual members of the Waltons, whose family own Walmart.
BLOOMBERG
