Chinese financial conglomerate Ant Financial on Friday offloaded a 3.6% stake in Indian fintech company Paytm for Rs 2,037 crore (about $247 million).
Antfin sold about 22.75 million shares of Paytm at Rs 895.20 apiece, stock exchange data shows.
Morgan Stanley and European financial services company Societe Generale bought around 40 lakh and 60 lakh shares in Paytm respectively.
To be sure, shares of Paytm ended Friday’s session with cuts of 0.5%, at Rs 899.30 per share on the Bombay Stock Exchange.
The deal comes in the backdrop of Paytm, who earlier this month, announced the purchase of Antfin’s 10.3% stake worth $628 million in the company by its founder and chief executive officer Vijay Shekhar Sharma.
An entity named Resilient Asset Management BV, fully owned by Sharma will purchase the Paytm stake from Antfin via an off-market transfer.
The deal, however, involves Antfin receiving convertible debentures of similar value in a company belonging to Sharma.
The latest two transactions come on the heels of Sharma looking to simplify the ownership of Paytm, with the aim to reduce Chinese ownership in the Delhi NCR-headquartered company.
"The government and RBI both were concerned about Chinese stakes in Indian fintechs, so the point was to reduce the stake of the Chinese companies in Paytm," a Mumbai-based analyst with a domestic brokerage had told Reuters on anonymity.
However, it’s not just Antfin which is reducing its stake in Paytm. Earlier this year in February, Alibaba sold its entire stake in Paytm.
Meanwhile, Japan's Softbank Group has also been selling its own shares in Paytm. The investor has brought its ownership in Paytm to 9.18% after selling its 2% across a series of open market transactions over June and July 2023. The investor had also sold a 2.07% stake worth nearly $120 million in Paytm in May.
