July 9 (Reuters) - Alibaba is weighing whether to offer up some of its Ant shares to the buyback, the company said Sunday in an exchange filing. Jack Ma-backed Ant Group Co. is proposing to buy back as much as 7.6% of shares, it said in a statement on Saturday.
Ant’s planned repurchase of the equity would value the company at about 567.1 billion yuan ($78.5 billion). That is almost 70% lower than the $280 billion market capitalization it fetched in 2020 for the scrapped initial public offering.
Financial regulators led by the central bank fined Ant and its affiliates a total of 7.12 billion yuan on Friday, ending two years of probe into the company.
Ant said it will transfer repurchased stock into the company’s staff incentive plan to attract talent.