Ant employees expected a windfall, but are stuck with unsellable shares

They were just days away from a multi-billion-dollar windfall.
 
But now employees of Jack Ma’s Ant Group Co. are stuck holding shares so difficult to value that even the company itself is struggling to determine a fair price. It has shelved a share buyback program for current and departing staff, in part because of uncertainty over how to value the company, according to Ant executive familiar with the matter.
 
The move underscores two intertwined challenges facing Ant, four months after Chinese authorities torpedoed its $35 billion initial public offering: The fintech giant’s future is still shrouded in doubt due to an ongoing lack of regulatory clarity, and employee morale is increasingly under threat. Ant is bracing for departures after it pays bonuses in April, the executives said, asking not to be named discussing private information.

 

Few doubt that Ant’s prospects have worsened dramatically since China began tightening regulations on the fintech sector, but the opacity surrounding the new rules has made it difficult to put a number on the damage. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Francis Chan, for instance, has lowered his estimate for Ant’s valuation three times since the IPO was scuttled.
 
 

Ant defies pressure from China to share more customer data
 
Ant Group has shared just a fraction of its consumer data with China’s central bank, defying intense government pressure to hand over more information after it was forced to pull its record $37 billion IPO last year, the Financial Times reported. The data dispute is the latest front in a fight between Beijing and the financial technology group founded by Jack Ma, the country’s best-known entrepreneur, after officials halted the company’s IPO days before it was set to list in November.