Jack Ma-founded Ant Group will swap nearly half its equity stake in Indian payments company Paytm for convertible debt, as geopolitical tension lingers between India and China.
The 10.3 per cent stake, worth about $628mn, will be transferred from Ant’s Netherlands company Antfin to a Netherlands group owned by Paytm’s founder and chief executive Vijay Shekhar Sharma. His holding in Paytm will rise to 19.4 per cent, while Ant’s will decline to 13.5 per cent.
No money will change hands. Sharma’s offshore entity will issue Ant optionally convertible debentures, a type of long-term debt that can be converted to equity shares at a later stage. That allowed “Antfin to retain economic value of the 10.3 per cent stake”, said Paytm in a stock market filing on Monday.