Ant Group prices Hong Kong leg of stock offering at HK$80 a share in the world’s largest initial public offering

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Ant Group poised to be world’s biggest private firm making public debut, with Hong Kong-Shanghai IPO

Ant Group poised to be world’s biggest private firm making public debut, with Hong Kong-Shanghai IPO

Ant’s IPO values it at US$313 billion, rising to US$318.50 billion when an over allotment option is included.

The core group of analysts at banks orchestrating the share sale have pegged Ant’s near-term valuation in a range from US$350 billion to US$450 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

The greenshoe, or overallotment option, for H shares will be not more than 15 per cent.

Investment banking boutique Ampere Partners is Ant’s financial adviser. CICC, Citigroup, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley are the sponsors and among the book runners of Ant’s Hong Kong share sale.

Ant and its advisers will now start building a book in the shares, collecting pledges and allocating stock to some of the world’s largest money managers as well as mom and pop investors in Hong Kong.

Ant is initially offering 41,768,000 H shares for subscription by the public in Hong Kong, about 2.5 per cent of the available H share. If the Hong Kong public offer is oversubscribed 20 times or more, then the Hong Kong retail offering will rise to 10 per cent.