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Ant Financial Close to Hiring Former Goldman Sachs Banker Feagin
Feagin could help Ant Financial build U.S. banking ties, guide its investments in financial startups
By WEI GU
Updated May 3, 2016 2:57 a.m. ET
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The financial affiliate of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is close to announcing the hiring of former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker Douglas Feagin to help its global push, according to people familiar with the situation.
Ant Financial Services Group, China’s most valuable financial-technology company, runs the country’s largest online payments platform by transaction volume, Alipay. Its global push includes investments in India and a deal with Uber Technologies Inc. to allow riders to pay fares with Alipay world-wide.
Ant Financial is flush with cash after a clutch of mostly Chinese state-backed firms invested $4.5 billion in its latest fundraising round—valuing the privately held company at roughly $60 billion—and has stepped up hiring deal makers ahead of its planned initial public offering.
Mr. Feagin could help Ant Financial build ties with the U.S. banking establishment and guide its investments in financial startups. He previously ran investment banking for financial-institution clients for the Americas at Goldman, after working in the same role in Asia until 2010. In Asia, he worked on two of Goldman’s most lucrative Chinese-bank deals—its investment in Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., the country’s largest bank by market cap, and the IPO of Bank of China Ltd.
Investment banking isn’t as attractive as it once was, even for Goldman Sachs bankers, long among Wall Street’s best-paid. Goldman’s first-quarter revenue—$6.34 billion, down 40%—was the lowest in any first quarter since 2004. The revenue decline was nearly twice rival Morgan Stanley’s 21%, and chief executive Lloyd Blankfein said the bank faced “headwinds across virtually every one of our businesses.”
Mr. Feagin has retired from Goldman Sachs, according to an internal memo sent to Goldman employees last month. The memo didn’t say where he was going. His hiring by Ant Financial as a senior vice president may be announced as early as this week, according to a person familiar with the situation.
Since being split off from Alibaba, Ant Financial has expanded from an online-payment platform into online wealth management and banking. More acquisitions across developing markets are in the cards.
“We will do something very aggressive in Southeast Asia and other developing countries,” Cyril Han, a vice president at Ant Financial, said at a Credit Suisse Group AG conference in Hong Kong last month. Southeast Asia’s limited banking infrastructure provides an opening for online payment services like Alipay, he said.
Ant Financial has also made a big bet on India, investing last year in Paytm, one of the country’s largest mobile-payment and commerce platforms, which also counts Alibaba as an investor.
In hiring a former Goldman Sachs banker to help spearhead overseas efforts, Ant Financial appears to be following the Alibaba playbook. Last August, Alibaba named Michael Evans, former vice chairman of Goldman, as its president, with a mandate to push its international expansion strategy. Mr. Evans and Mr. Feagin worked together in Goldman’s Hong Kong office.
A number of Goldman alumni now occupy senior positions at Chinese Internet giants. Martin Lau, a former executive director at Goldman, is president of Tencent Holding Ltd., China’s largest gaming and social-networking company. James Mitchell, formerly Goldman’s New York-based head of communications, media and entertainment research, is Tencent’s chief strategy officer.
Before becoming president of Chinese ride-hailing service Didi Kuaidi Joint Co. last year, Jean Liu had been a managing director at Goldman’s principal investment area in Asia.
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