Ant Group's IPO in Shanghai and Hong Kong halted

After Shanghai Stock Exchange announced on Tuesday evening the postponement of Ant Group's listing on Nasdaq-style STAR Market, the fintech giant announced later on the same day the suspension of its listing in Hong Kong.

As Ant reported, after joint talks with regulators, some major changes, including changes of regulation on the fintech industry, may result in a failure of meeting IPO standards or information disclosure requirements, therefore, SSE decided to postpone the listing of Ant, which was scheduled for Thursday, SSE said in the notice.

Less than an hour later, Ant announced the suspension of its listing in Hong Kong due to the SSE's halt decision.

The postponement came just one day after China's top financial regulators conducted a rare joint regulatory talk with Ant's co-founder Jack Ma, Chairman Eric Jing, and Chief Executive Simon Hu, on Monday.

The world's largest IPO faces regulatory risks since China is tightening regulation over online lenders. China's banking and insurance regulator on Monday posted draft rules on small loan lenders, putting limits on their operating areas, leverage and licenses.

Previously known as Ant Financial, the Hangzhou-based company was the fintech arm spun out of Alibaba Group. Ant is the parent company of China's largest mobile payments business Alipay, which has over 700 million monthly active users in the country.

The company could not be reached for further comments by press time.