For Ma, the idea that the third try will be good does not come true.
The companies under Ma's command have long sought to establish bridgeheads that will expand the business in the United States. The defeat of MoneyGram International Inc. by Ant Financial Services (also referred to as Ant Financial) is undoubtedly another setback for the Chinese billionaire. Prior to this, a U.S. National Security Council conducted a three-round assessment of the transaction.
Mr. Ma, 53, founded Ant Financial in 2010 and 2011 after a series of deals to separate payments out of his e-commerce giant Alibaba Group. Ant Financial Services became one of the largest and most valuable private financial institutions in China by providing a wide range of services, including daily purchase payments and mutual fund investments, to hundreds of millions of Chinese users who use their payment network Alipay.
Ant Financial has also been a global expansion, but has long been unable to develop large-scale business in the U.S. market. The acquisition of Escrow Gold by Ant Financial for $ 1.2 billion could quickly provide Alipay a foothold in the United States that would allow the company to promote its services to its customers. Speed Money is headquartered in Dallas, with approximately 2.4 billion bank or mobile accounts in 200 countries around the world. The two companies canceled the merger plan on Tuesday and gave up their efforts to convince the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to approve the deal for the past year.
Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group, a market research firm, said Jack's global ambitions have been tough on the US market. Although Alibaba is a big success in China, its e-commerce service needs a little while in the United States. It has a long way to go before mature platforms such as Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc., While the U.S. credit card penetration rate Also limits the Alipay expansion space.
Rein said the current trade relations between China and the United States are rather strained. Alibaba and other well-known Chinese companies may find it more difficult to start mergers and acquisitions in the United States in the future.
On Wednesday, a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry, Geng Shuang, said that the Chinese government has always encouraged Chinese enterprises to carry out investment and cooperation with other countries on the basis of market principles and on the basis of complying with local laws and regulations. He also said that China hopes the United States will provide a fair and predictable environment for Chinese enterprises to invest in the United States.
Alibaba, whose chairman of the board of directors was Jack Ma, successfully landed on the NYSE in 2014, has repeatedly suffered setbacks in the U.S. market. Alibaba's daily deal volume has eclipsed the US E-commerce website. Like Ant Financial, the company has made a lot of moves to expand overseas and the United States is still small in the world's largest economy.
In June 2014, Alibaba tried to tap Alabama's online retail market by launching 11 Main, a U.S. shopping site selling clothes, accessories and handicrafts. However, much progress was not made and a year later Alibaba sold 11 Main to its New York-based e-commerce site OpenSky.
Last year, Alibaba took a different approach to seeking to attract U.S. small business owners to sell their products to Chinese consumers. During a two-day meeting in June in Detroit with celebrities such as Martha Stewart, Jack spoke directly to American businessmen about the benefits of selling their products to China's growing middle class.
Alibaba wants to convince small American businesses to sell their products on its marketplace to create enough sales growth to boost employment. When he met with U.S. President Donald Trump in January 2017, Jack Ma promised to create one million jobs in the United States.
A potential complication is that Taobao, Alibaba's flagship online platform, is included in the U.S. government's blacklist of global markets for selling counterfeit and pirated goods. When the U.S. trade representative again added Taobao to the list in December 2016, Alibaba questioned if the move was affected by political factors.
Ant clothes still hope to create a competitive global network, but without the speed of gold this process may be more slowly. A year ago the company said it hopes to expand its subscriber base to 2 billion by 2025. At present, Ant Financial has about 500 million users, which means that the company must develop overseas markets to achieve its goal.
To date, Ant Financial has acquired electronic payment networks in a number of large overseas markets, including Paytm acquired in India two years ago and a payment alliance in Asia, North America, Europe and Australia, in partnership with local banks and retailers, In the shopping area for Chinese tourists to use the convenience of Alipay.
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James Lloyd, head of Asia Pacific financial technology at Ernst & Young, said that building his own network is more difficult than buying one. And he thinks there may not be a lot of assets available for acquisition for Ant Financial.
Ant Financial now has a partnership with First Data, a payment processor in the United States, and VeriFone, a hardware maker, and in 2016 acquired EyeVerify Inc., a manufacturer of optical recognition technology. Douglas Feagin, President of Ant Financial Services International said in a statement on Tuesday that he plans to launch a new strategic cooperation with Speedpost to enhance its global remittance capabilities and focus on remittance services targeting China, India and the Philippines.