the times | Tuesday July 21 2020 2GM 45Business
China’s largest digital payments
company has lit the touch paper on one
of the most keenly anticipated stock
market floats of recent years.
Ant Group, the financial technology
offshoot of Alibaba, the giant Chinese
internet commerce group, said yester-
day that it would list its shares in Hong
Kong and Shanghai.
China’s dominant mobile payments
company did not disclose the size, time-
table or other details of the offering, but
the flotation could value the company
at more than $200 billion, in line with
Paypal, its American peer and rival.
The deal will give a boost to Hong
Kong and Shanghai’s Star market, a
one-year-old exchange that China
hopes will outgun New York’s techno-
logy-heavy Nasdaq. In the past, many
of China’s highest-profile internetThe owner of the Tom’s Guide and Tech
Radar gadget websites is to cut about
200 jobs after its takeover of magazines
including Wallpaper*, Horse & Hound
and Woman’s Weekly.
Future said that it had begun a re-
dundancy process at TI Media, which it
acquired recently for £140 million. It is
expected to reduce the magazine pub-
lisher’s 1,500-strong workforce by more
than 10 per cent.
The consultation is part of Future’scial Times said were among Wirecard’s
biggest customers. It reported that the
websites were paying about 15 per cent
commission, described by experts as a
red flag for anti-money laundering con-
cerns.
The Times has found evidence that MrAkhavan is linked to hundreds of porno-
graphic websites via Trade News Corpo-
ration, an internet company. Trade
News Corporation is based in the same
building in Los Angeles as an entity
called Quantum Solutions Inc of Cali-
fornia, part of a group controlled via MrAkhavan. A number of these porno-
graphic websites, some almost identical
in design and content, were registered to
entities called Alpha Bright Inc or Arave
Investments, part of the Consett net-
work.
The Times revealed last month howWirecard staff were shareholders in the
agent behind the Consett network,
which was shut down after the British
government uncovered links to suspect-
ed money laundering and a prosecution
of a German citizen in the United States.
Simon Dowson, who ran the ConsettAnt clears the decks for $200bn
float on Hong Kong stock market
Simon Duke Technology Business Editor companies have opted to go public in
the United States, including Alibaba, its
rival JD.com and Netease, the online
gaming player. Escalating tensions
between Washington and Beijing have
prompted that trio to secure listings in
Hong Kong.
Ant is the world’s most valuable
technology “unicorn” — those busines
start-ups valued at more than $1 billion.
In 2018 it achieved a valuation of
$150 billion after raising capital from
Baillie Gifford, the British fund mana-
ger, Temasek, the Singaporean state
fund, and General Atlantic and
Warburg Pincus, the private equity
investors. Recent private market share
trades suggest that it is worth more
than $200 billion.
Ant Group, previously Ant Financial,
is best known for its Alipay mobile
wallet, which competes with Tencent’s
Wechat Pay. Both apps have become apopular alternative to cash within
China.
The service was first launched in- Eight years later, Jack Ma, 55, the
billionaire founder of Alibaba, spun
Alipay out of Alibaba into an entity he
controlled, causing friction with Yahoo
and Softbank, which at the time were its
largest outside investors. In addition to
payments, Ant Group offers financial
services such as wealth management,
online lending and insurance. More
than 600 million Chinese consumers
invest in Ant’s money market fund.
Alipay has evolved into a superapp,offering restaurant reviews and online
shopping via Alibaba’s marketplace.
Third-party vendors offer food
delivery, hotel bookings and other ser-
vices.
“Becoming a public company will
enhance transparency to our stake-
holders, including customers, business
partners, employees, shareholders and
regulators,” Eric Jing, 47, Ant’s chief
executive, said.
Ant Group is reported to have made
a profit of more than $2 billion in the
final quarter of last year. Its earnings
are likely to have risen since then, with
Chinese consumers buying more
online because of the Covid-19 pan-
demic.
The float is a significant vote of confi-
dence for Hong Kong, whose status as
Asia’s financial hub has been ques-
tioned after Beijing imposed a tough
new national security law on the city.Magazine jobs go despite promise of bright Future
plan to reap £15 million in cost savings
from the acquisition. In a trading
update, the publisher said that the
integration of TI Media was “progress-
ing in line with expectations” and that it
had “secured” £9 million of the planned
synergies.
The job cuts are the latest blow to
consumer publishing, with advertising
and sales falling sharply during the
lockdown. The owners of the Mirror
and Guardian newspapers are making
hundreds of staff redundant.
Future, one of the stock exchange’sbest performers over recent years, also
predicted that its full-year earnings
would be at the “top end” of City fore-
casts thanks to “strong digital audience
numbers”. Its shares rose 13.9 per cent,
or 168p, to £13.78 yesterday, valuing the
company at more than £1.3 billion.
Founded as a computer magazine
publisher in 1985, Future is among the
London’s largest listed media groups.
Under Zillah Byng-Thorne, 45, who has
run the business since 2014, it has
expanded rapidly through a series of
progressively larger acquisitions. Itstakeover of TI Media added 41 titles,
including Country Life and Golf
Monthly. Under Ms Bynge-Thorne, its
share price has risen more than tenfold.
In November she earned £14.7 million
by selling 1.05 million shares at £14
each.
Future, which said that it had
launched gardening, fitness and televi-
sion websites based on TI Media maga-
zines, forecast adjusted underlying
earnings of £86.3 million to £91 million
for the year to the end of September, up
from £54.5 million last year.Simon DukeCrude prices
pile pressure
on Halliburton
Emily Gosden Energy EditorLosses at Halliburton deepened to
$1.7 billion in the second quarter after
the collapse in crude prices resulted in
work drying up at the oil industry
services group.
Revenues in the United States, its
biggest market, plunged to $1 billion
from $3.3 billion in the same period last
year as oil producers halted fracking
and cancelled new projects.
The quarterly loss compares with a
$77 million profit in the same three-
month period last year and a $1 billion
loss in the first three months of this
year. It reflects $2.1 billion of impair-
ments and other charges as it writes off
the value of pressure pumping
equipment and booked restructuring
charges.
However, shares in the New York-
listed company rose yesterday, closing
32 cents, or 2.4 per cent, up at $13.41,
after analysts hailed progress in cost-
cutting and cash generation that was
stronger than had been expected.
Halliburton, which was founded in
1919, employs more than 40,000 people
in 80 countries. It is the leading
provider of equipment to companies
fracking for oil and gas in the United
States, which have been hit particularly
hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
Lockdown restrictions worldwide
caused an unprecedented drop in
demand for oil and Brent crude, the
global benchmark price, collapsed from
more than $65 a barrel at the start of the
year to less than $20 a barrel in April.
While Brent has recovered to above
$40 a barrel, many oil producers are
struggling to make money at such
prices and have slashed billions of
dollars of spending.$2bn
Ant Group’s final-quarter profit in 2019
Ant Groupfake merchants and porn sites
network, said that Wirecard staff in
Germany had given him referrals for
merchant businesses that wanted a shell
company through which to transact. Mr
Dowson has denied knowledge of any
wrongdoing by the companies.
Identical customer service pages to
those seen on the porn sites appeared on
websites of two other UK companies,
including Optima Merchant Services,
formerly controlled by Mr Akhavan.
A former director of Animo, of the Es-
sex shell network, is Paul Maurice, 66, a
retired accountant who was a director of
several Consett companies.
Mr Akhavan lawyers said that he took
legal advice on corporate, banking and
credit card matters in order to do things
in a “compliance-oriented” manner.
They said there was no credit card
industry “category code” for cannabis
and that banks picked such category
codes.
According to the indictment, such
banks knew they were processing can-
nabis and charged extra for it, so the
merchant selling the goods “can’t en-
gage in transaction laundering”, they
added. They argued there were no vic-
tims in the case and expected their client
to be exonerated.
Wirecard declined to comment.
Animo, Mr Quirk and Mr Maurice did
not respond to an invitation to
comment. Mr Adam could not be
reached. Deutsche Payment said that
“neither Peter Adam nor Ruben
Weigand nor Hamid Akhavan are per-
sonally known to us” and that it did not
process Eaze payments.Ruben Weigand and Hamid Akhavan, far right, who gave his address as this California mansion, are charged with conspiring to avoid restrictions in the financial systemc i T i a c b n m g a t t