INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERING

Subject : Economics

Context : The scheduled initial public offering (IPO) of Ant Group has been delayed for now, after its plans of listing on the Shanghai and Hong Kong’s stock exchanges were thwarted by authorities.

Concept :

• Ant Group is the world’s highest-valued FinTech company, and most valuable unicorn company. It had hoped to raise up to $37 billion from the market, in an IPO that would have been the world’s largest, beating the last year’s $29.4 billion listing of Saudi Aramco.

Inital Public Offering :

• IPO is the selling of securities to the public in the primary market.
• Primary market deals with new securities being issued for the first time. It is also known as the new issues market.
• It is different from secondary market where existing securities are bought and sold. It is also known as the stock market or stock exchange.
• It is when an unlisted company makes either a fresh issue of securities or an offer for sale of its existing securities or both for the first time to the public.
• Unlisted companies are companies that are not listed on the stock exchange.
• It is generally used by new and medium-sized firms that are looking for funds to grow and expand their business.