China's Securities regulator denies conducting Ant Group review

China's Securities regulator on Thursday denied that it is conducting a review on Ant Group's initial public offering, as the financial technology company confirmed "rectification work" to be its current business priority.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission on Thursday said in a statement that it had not conducted "evaluation and research work" regarding a potential Ant Group IPO. The commission added it supports eligible platform companies going public at home and abroad.

In a separate statement, Ant said: "Under the guidance of regulators, we are focused on steadily moving forward with our rectification work and do not have any plan to initiate an IPO."

The announcements were made in response to media reports alleging that Beijing had given initial nod to reviving Ant's listing plan, which was put to a halt in late 2020 with regulators citing a change in regulatory environment to ensure market fairness.

Major revamps on Ant include disconnecting its payment app Alipay from sister credit products like Huabei and Jiebei, ending its monopoly on information collection, improving managing liquidity risks of important fund products and reducing the balance of its money market fund Yu'EBao.

hewei@chinadaily.com.cn