Queen of the colony
What Ant Group’s IPO says about the future of finance
蚂蚁集团的IPO对金融的未来有什么影响
The giant Chinese fintech upstart is expected to raise more than $30bn, eclipsing Saudi Aramco’s debut last year
这家中国金融科技巨头新贵预计筹资逾300亿美元，筹资金额超过去年的沙特阿美
2020年10月10日|上海
IN THE STAID world of Chinese banking, it is rare for executives to voice public criticism. So Jack Ma, the founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, made headlines in 2008 when he bemoaned how hard it was for small businesses to get loans: “If the banks don’t change, we’ll change the banks.” He has not repeated his warning since then. He has not needed to.
在中国银行业呆板的世界里，高管们很少公开批评。因此，电子商务巨头阿里巴巴的创始人马云（Jack Ma）在2008年上了头条，他哀叹小企业获得贷款是多么困难：”如果银行不改变，我们将改变银行。从那以后，他没有重次警告，已经不需要了（因为银行业已经被改变了）。
注：
“If the banks don’t change, we’ll change the banks.”，马云的经典名言
Through Ant Group, which began life as a payments service on Alibaba, Mr Ma’s impact on the Chinese financial system has been profound. Ant has helped establish China as the world leader in digital transactions, given entrepreneurs and consumers far greater access to loans, and changed the way that people manage their money. It is now a giant in its own right. Over the past year it counted more than 1bn active users. Last year it handled 110trn yuan ($16trn) in payments, nearly 25 times more than PayPal, the biggest online payments platform outside China (see chart 1).
通过蚂蚁集团（Ant Group）开始为阿里巴巴提供支付服务，马云对中国金融体系的影响是深远的。蚂蚁帮助中国确立了在数字交易领域的世界领先地位，给企业家和消费者提供了更大的贷款渠道，并改变了人们理财的方式。现在它本身就是一个巨人。在过去的一年中，它的活跃用户超过10亿。去年，它处理了110万亿元人民币（16万亿美元）的支付，比PayPal（中国以外最大的在线支付平台）多近25倍（见图表1）。
An initial public offering (IPO) in the coming weeks will bear testimony to Ant’s growth. It is expected to raise more than $30bn, eclipsing Saudi Aramco’s debut last year as the biggest IPO—a symbol of the world’s transition from a century in which oil was the most valuable resource to an era that prizes data. With a forward price-to-earnings multiple of 40, in line with big global payments companies, Ant could fetch a market capitalisation in excess of $300bn, more than any bank in the world.
未来几周的首次公开募股（IPO）将证明蚂蚁的成长。预计该公司将融资300多亿美元，超过沙特阿美（Saudi Aramco），成为最大的IPO——这是全球最宝贵资源从石油到数据转变的象征。蚂蚁金服的市盈率是40倍，与大型全球支付公司相当，因此其市值可能超过3000亿美元，超过世界上任何一家银行。
More important than its size is what Ant represents. It matters globally in a way that no other Chinese financial institution does. China’s banks are huge but inefficient, burdened by state ownership. By contrast foreign financiers look at Ant with curiosity, envy and anxiety. Some hawks in the White House reportedly want to rein in the company or hobble its IPO. Ant is the most integrated fintech platform in the world: think of it as a combination of Apple Pay for offline pay, PayPal for online pay, Venmo for transfers, Mastercard for credit cards, JPMorgan Chase for consumer financing and iShares for investing, with an insurance brokerage thrown in for good measure, all in one mobile app.
比其大小更重要的是蚂蚁所代表的含义。在全球范围内，它的重要性是其他中国金融机构无法做到的。中国的银行庞大但效率低下，背负着国家所有权的重担。相比之下，外国金融家对蚂蚁充满好奇、嫉妒和焦虑。据报道，白宫的一些鹰派人士想控制该公司或阻碍其IPO。蚂蚁是世界上集成度最高的金融科技平台：可以将其组合为Apple Pay（用于离线支付），PayPal（用于在线支付），Venmo（用于转账），Mastercard（用于信用卡），JPMorgan Chase（用于消费者融资）和 iShares（用于投资），保险经纪等，所有功能集合到一个 app。
Given the abundance of consumer data in China and the relatively lax safeguards around its use, Ant has more to work with than fintech peers elsewhere. More than 3,000 variables have gone into its credit-risk models, and its automated systems decide whether to grant loans within three minutes—a claim that may seem far-fetched but for Alibaba’s proven ability to handle 544,000 orders per second. Ant is, in short, the world’s purest example of the tremendous potential of digital finance. But as it advances further, it may also be an early warning of its limitations.
鉴于中国大量的消费者数据，以及围绕其使用的相对宽松的保障措施。与其他地方的金融科技同行相比，蚂蚁还有很多工作可以做。超过3,000个变量已进入其信用风险模型，其自动化系统决定是否在三分钟内发放贷款。这一说法似乎有些牵强，但阿里巴巴已证明每秒可处理54.4万份订单。简而言之，蚂蚁是数字金融巨大潜力的世界上最纯粹的例子。但随着它的进一步发展，它也可能是对其局限性的早期警告。
Start with a deceptively simple question: what is Ant? In its decade as an independent company it has changed names three times—from Alibaba E-Commerce to Ant Small and Micro Financial Services to Ant Group. The company once called itself a fintech leader. Then Mr Ma inverted the term to techfin, in order better to capture its priorities. Such are its efforts to distinguish itself from a purely financial firm that it has asked some brokerages to assign tech analysts to cover it. (Of course, it does not hurt that the valuations for tech stocks are much plumper than for bank stocks.)
从一个看似简单的问题开始：什么是蚂蚁？在作为独立公司的十年中，它已经三度更名，从阿里巴巴电子商务到蚂蚁小微金融服务再到蚂蚁集团。该公司曾经自称为金融科技领导者。然后，马先生将术语改为 techfin，以便更好地把握其优先事项。这是其与纯粹的金融公司区分开来的努力，该公司要求一些经纪公司指派技术分析师来为其提供服务。（当然，科技类股票的估值要比银行类股票的估值高得多，这没有什么坏处。）
打开一个新世界 