Ant Group follows new marching orders from regulators in China
12 April 2021
Uncertainty surrounding the future of China’s giant fintech company Ant Group cleared up on Monday after years of friction with its domestic regulators.
Driving the news: Ant is shedding its cool tech image and stepping into a new identity as a financial holding company — the result of forced changes by several banking and securities agencies in China.
- Authorities in the country are directing Ant to lessen its hold on the mobile payments market by requiring it to shrink some of its services and to break up the “information monopoly” it has on up to 1 billion users in China.
Why it matters: The future of Ant and its sibling company Alibaba has been hard to predict since the canceled Ant IPO last year.
- Ant Group’s controlling shareholder is Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma, who in one speech sealed Ant’s fate. But long before that speech (and other criticisms he's lobbed at China's banks), the speed at which Ant Group's prime product Alipay grew made it a big target.
- This weekend brought a conclusion to Alibaba’s saga as well — at least for the moment — after Beijing issued an antitrust fine equivalent to $2.8 billion for anti-competitive practices.
- Shares of Alibaba in Hong Kong closed up more than 6% Monday.
Thought bubble from Axios' Felix Salmon: Financial startups generally avoid close regulatory oversight until they become systemically important, at which point regulators inevitably step in. That’s as true in China as it is anywhere else.
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.