‘Started as Alipay in 2004, Ant Group has transformed from a digital payments company for Alibaba to an aggregator of financial services. Today, the group’s lending, wealth management, and insurance offerings count for 63% of its revenue. In the first half of this year, a further shift in revenue generation saw the credit business surpassing payments for the first time ever. […]

Ant’s prospectus, for its dual listing in Shanghai and Hong Kong, states that “we call ourselves Ant because we believe that small is beautiful, small is powerful”, but if the company can keep this pace up, it will be marching on to a valuation more closely resembling an army of unicorns as opposed to anything reminiscent of its name’ was how Fintech Collective newsletter captured this eponymous company. 

Today, Alibaba’s affiliate fintech company, Ant Group (of Alipay), does generate more payment volume than Visa and Mastercard combined! Ant does $18 trillion while the American giants bring in $16 trillion. Ant was started in 2004 while Visa and Mastercard were respectively started in 1958 and 1966.

When a company of such scale and size goes to the public market, expect records to be broken. And today, we are noting that Ant did break a record. Yes, it has beaten Saudi Aramco, the national oil company of Saudi Arabia, as the world’s largest IPO.

In a record breaking move, Jack Ma’s Ant Group pulled off the biggest share sale in history, with a $34.1 billion Initial Public Offering (IPO), beating Saudi Aramco’s previous record of $29.4 billion.

The Ant Group has been in market news as it prepared to make its market debut. The regulatory filing released Monday showed the Chinese tech giant priced its dual listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and Shanghai’s Star Market at 80 Hong Kong dollars ($10.32) and 68 yuan ($10.13) per share respectively.

The $34.1 billion IPO puts the company’s value at $310 billion. Ant’s decision to file its initial public offering with Shanghai and Hong Kong markets signals a looming boycott of US markets by Chinese firms. The Chinese government has recently been encouraging its companies to avoid US markets, following the economic and political tensions between the two countries that have put Chinese companies under serious scrutiny in America.

You will wish you have this “ant” in your portfolio because Ant’s ambition is to go global and challenge Visa and Mastercard in domains where it does not exist at the moment. Team China makes history – the world’s largest IPO, and this came via a private company, unlike Aramco, which is a state owned enterprise.

It is becoming China’s world; prepare for it.

Ant Beats Saudi Aramco, Raises $34b in World’s Biggest IPO

Today, I updated our consumer facing startups that Nigeria now has 25 million people who EARN income and can pay for something. My old model was 30 million. But with Covid-19 and the current paralysis, 5 million have gone from the informal sector and some sectors in corporate Nigeria. Jobs lost in hospitality, private education, etc are huge. 

These 25 million people would have to support the 175 million others. Our model does show that indeed, Nigeria has a population in excess of 200 million people. We used INEC data, etc to build our model, using historical election participation rate, to indeed model that Nigeria is above 200 million in population. The INEC register is valid because local politicians who could have challenged it, if it were fraudulent, trust it, and that means at the national level, it is a reliable document. That does not mean the votes count, using it, are reliable. But the register itself is a valid document.

So, as we see the exodus and death of companies, I remind everyone that Nigeria has about 30 million people who earn income and can pay for anything. Any model built outside that 30 million will disappoint. I have explained how I arrived at this 30 million number here. With the pandemic affecting that 30 million number, which carries the other 170 million citizens, you will then understand the challenge we have in the near future.

I will be sharing the full details during Tekedia Live on Wednesday. This is exclusive for Tekedia Mini-MBA members.

Why Brands Struggle and Depart Nigeria

MTN Group has announced the appointment of Karl Toriola as the CEO of MTN Nigeria, effective from 1 March 2021. Toriola, current vice president for MTN Group’s West and Central Africa (WECA) region, will take over as MTN Nigeria CEO from Ferdi Moolman, who has served in this role for the past five years. Moolman will return to South Africa, where he will assume the new role of group chief risk officer.

Toriola has a BSc Hons in Electronic and Electrical Engineering and a MSc in Communication Systems. In his five years as VP of MTN’s WECA region, Toriola has overseen the steady progress of the operating companies in the region, notably the turnaround of MTN Ivory Coast and MTN Cameroon over the past two years, the operator said.

Since joining the group in 2006, Toriola has also held a number of senior operational roles at MTN, including chief technical officer of MTN Nigeria and CEO of MTN Cameroon. 

MTN Group owns 78.8% of MTN Nigeria. We wish him a good tenure.