After having starred in America by aligning four of its banks in the top 5 of the world’s most powerful banking institutions (S & P ranking), China has just broken a new record through one of its companies.
Thus, Ant Financial (“the ant of the finance”, in English), which exploits Alipay’s online payment system and Alipay mobile launched in 2004, announced this Friday a fundraising of about 14 billion dollars, the largest ever by an unlisted company.
This round of C series, in dollar and partly in yuan, brought together existing shareholders and new investors, sovereign and public funds, such as Singaporeans GIC and Temasek, the Malaysian Khazanah Nasional or the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. (CPPIB), and large investment or venture capital funds, such as Californian Sequoia, New Yorker Warburg Pincus and Carlyle Asset Manager.
In 2014, Uber set a record of $ 1.2 billion. Record beaten since by Ant in 2016 ($ 4.5 billion) and by the Chinese VTC company Didi in April 2017 with more than $ 5.5 billion.
