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By giving up his control of Ant, Ma will no longer control Hundsun, in which Ant holds a controlling stake.
“Since no shareholder, alone or jointly with other parties, will have control over Ant Group … the actual controller of Hundsun Technologies will also be changed from Mr Ma Yun to no actual controller,” Hundsun’s statement read, referring to Ma’s Chinese name.
Founded in Hangzhou in 1995 as a financial information provider, Hundsun created one of China’s most popular trading software for securities and fund management companies. The company went public in Shanghai in 2003 and had a market capitalisation of 80.2 billion yuan (US$11.7 billion) as of Friday.
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In 2014, the same year that Ant was founded, Ma acquired a controlling share of Hundsun Technologies from its parent Hundsun Group, through a company in which he owned a 99 per cent stake. . The 3.3 billion yuan deal, which triggered a four-month antitrust investigation by China’s Ministry of Commerce, gave Ma a 20.62 per cent stake in Hundsun Technologies.
Those equity shares were transferred to Ant a year later, giving the fledgling company the synergies it needed to rapidly expand in China’s fintech sector, with Ma still in effective control of the software provider.
In late 2014, Ant and Hundsun, along with state-owned entities China National Investment and Guaranty Corporation, announced they would jointly establish Zhejiang Santan Financial Information Service Co – a company that was widely viewed as a direct rival to Lufax Holding, an online wealth management marketplace associated with Ping An Group.
As with other major players in the industry, however, Hundsun’s business has been recently battered by economic headwinds and regulatory pressure.
The company reported a 98.3 per cent plunge in earnings to 11.5 million yuan in the first three quarters of 2022, while Ant (Hangzhou) Funds Sales, the mutual fund distribution arm of Ant Group, recorded a 74.5 per cent slump in net profit year on year to 82.85 million yuan in the first half of 2022.