Chinese P2P lender planning US IPO
Chinese peer-to-peer lender Lufax is reported to be working on an initial public offering in the US.
The fintech firm, which has been shifting from P2P lending to wealth management and could look to go public next year, according to a number of reports in Reuters, Bloomberg and The South China Morning Post.
Lufax raised $1.2bn (£946m) of equity investment in 2018 and is believed to be worth $38bn.
It has 44 million users who have earned a total of 94.bn yuan, according to the Lufax website.
If it were to list, Lufax would follow China’s oldest P2P lender Ppdai.com which floated on the New York Stock Exchange in 2017.
Lufax previously abandoned attempts at a Hong Kong listing in 2018.
China has been cracking down on P2P lenders and has imposed tougher regulations in recent years amid claims of fraud.
At its peak, China’s P2P lending industry had almost 50 million investors and $150bn (£115.bn) in debt outstanding.
However, fraud and defaults led to President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on financial risk in the sector which caused the industry to shrink in size.
The highest-profile case saw P2P platform Ezubao operate a Ponzi scheme to raise over 58bn yuan (£6.7bn) from 901,294 investors.