Editorial | Delay to Ant IPO shows Beijing’s desire to get the rules right
- There was a great deal of disappointment when Chinese regulators halted the world’s largest initial public offering at the last minute, but concerns and criticisms need to be put into perspective

Hong Kong will remain a favourite destination for new listings. The IPOs of the Tencent-backed video-sharing developer Kuaishou and ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing are expected to go ahead.
Unlike traditional banks, fintech companies are so new that no country has yet figured out a standard regulatory regime for them. Instead of painting Ant Group and Chinese regulators as being at loggerheads, it’s more accurate to see them as frustrated dance partners still trying to learn the new moves together.
Both sides have a point. Fintech players can’t be allowed to run wild, and in China, Ant is the largest of them all. Better regulatory protocols need to be put in place before the horse bolts from the barn. The staggering size of Ant’s IPO probably caught regulators by surprise. But Jack Ma, founder of Ant and Alibaba, was also right in his by now infamous speech in which he argued standard regulations for traditional lenders were behind the curve and should not pull back the development of fintech. Alibaba owns this newspaper. The speech has been interpreted as a challenge to the communist authorities and so triggered regulators to step in. That’s unlikely.
Chinese regulators won’t drop the US$35 billion mother of all IPOs just to show who the boss is. They would have had direct approval from the highest authority to intervene at such a late hour.