In an official announcement on Monday, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX) said that the exchange will offer Ant Futures and Options to investors on Ant Group’s debut date (5 November 2020) at HKEX.

The exchange also planned to include Ant shares in HKEX’s designated securities eligible for short selling on the debut date, subject to the listing of company shares at HKEX on that date. Additionally, HKEX informed issuers that they can list derivative warrants on Ant shares on the debut date of shares on HKEX’s securities market.

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HKEX mentioned the details of Ant Futures and Options to be available for trading on 5 November 2020. The contract size for options is 1,000 while stocks futures contract months available for trading on the debut date are, November and December for 2020. The stock options contract will also available for November and December this year.

Ant Group, previously known as Ant Financial and Alipay, is an affiliate company of China’s giant technology group Alibaba. Ant Group made headlines in October 2020, after raising $34.5 billion in the world’s largest IPO, valuing the company at around $313 billion. The amount made Ant Group the world’s highest-valued Fintech company.

Innovation and Research

Ant Group intends to focus on digital innovation and research, and it plans to use most of the raised capital in research and development capabilities. The group owns China’s largest digital payment platform, Alipay, which serves more than 1 billion users and 80 million merchants. Ant Group is further planning to enhance its cross-border payment capabilities including usage of blockchain technology in cross-border payments. Ant Group named its blockchain network AntChain and introduced many products in the recent months based on AntChain. Finance Magnates reported earlier this year about the launch of Ant Group’s blockchain solution platform for the SME’s. Ant Bank, the virtual banking arm of Ant Group, launched a virtual lender in Hong Kong in September.