Jack Ma-backed Ant Group Co is proposing to buy back as much as 7.6% of shares in an effort to retain talent and offer an exit for investors ensnared by a years-long regulatory crackdown at the company.
Ant’s planned repurchase of the equity would value the company at about 567.1 billion yuan ($78.5 billion), it said in a statement on Saturday. That is almost 70% lower than the $280 billion market capitalization it fetched in 2020 for the scrapped initial public offering.
