Worsening US-China relations can lead to increasing regulatory challenges or "enhanced restrictions against China and other Chinese technology companies, including us and Alibaba", Ant Group warned investors on Monday, in its IPO prospectus. Such restrictions can come in a wide range of areas such as data security and privacy, emerging technologies, “dual-use” commercial technologies and "applications that could be deployed for surveillance or military purposes", among other things, the Ant Group said. In its long-awaited and historic IPO filed on Monday, Ant Group — the payments and fintech arm of China's Alibaba Group — cited US-China relations as one of the risk factors to its business. The company runs Alipay, one of China's most popular payment services, but it now has interests in insurance, wealth management, micro-loans, and also sells enterprise financial products to businessess. Revenues from digital finance technology platform accounted for 56% and 63% of revenue in FY19 and H1FY20 respectively. Alibaba owns a 33% stake in Ant Financial, and its founder Jack Ma still holds a controlling stake. Ant Group will carry out a concurrent initial public offering (IPO) on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s STAR board as well as the Hong Kong stock exchange. The STAR market is China’s "answer" to the technology-focused NASDAQ in the US. Which brings us to Ant Group's warning: Deteriorating US-China relations has led to greater uncertainty in other parts of the world affecting China and Chinese companies. How US-China relations can impact Ant's business Cases in point are the restrictions, starting…
