China’s President Xi Jinping personally decided to stop the world’s biggest-ever IPO after Ant Group’s creator and China's second-richest man Jack Ma talked against the country’s innovation-oppressive financial management and banking system.
Ant Group was supposed to be launched on November 5. On Nov 13 Wall Street Journal informed that President Xi ordered Chinese regulators to investigate and close Ant Group’s stock market backing. Jack Ma seems to have frustrated Beijing by his speech on Oct. 24 in terms of "Second Bund Financial Summit". He said that China’s regulation was choking innovation and needed serious reform. The successful businessman also soluted digital currency stating that technology would reformulate money like Apple has redefined phones and will possibly be the center of the world’s future financial system.
Ma and Ant Group's top executives were consequently called into a meeting with People's Bank of China (PBoC) and three financial regulators on Nov.2, the same day as China published new draft rules for online micro-lending.
The details of the discussions are unknown. However, the next day Shanghai Stock Exchange in China informed about postponing the listing of Ant Technology Group Co., Ltd. on the Sci-Tech innovation board. Just after Ant Group founder’s speech, China’s regulators began to collect data on how Ant’s digital finance business model was creating debt with poor and young people.