ALIBABA Group Holding is considering selling shares to Ant Group as part of the fintech company’s planned buyback after financial regulators wrapped a nearly three-year probe into the financial technology company.

Alibaba, which owns about a third of Ant, said in a stock exchange filing in Hong Kong that it received notice of the Ant share buyback programme at a valuation of 567.1 billion yuan (S$106 billion).

On Saturday (Jul 8), Ant proposed to buy back as much as 7.6 per cent of shares in an effort to provide a chance to cut stakes for investors ensnared by a years-long regulatory crackdown at the fintech powerhouse.

The planned share repurchase would value the company at almost 70 per cent less than its US$280 billion market capitalisation in 2020. BLOOMBERG