Why China Changed the Rules on Jack Ma’s Ant Group

Years of loose regulatory oversight in China helped billionaire Jack Ma’s Ant Group become the world’s most-valuable financial giant, with businesses spanning payments, banking, wealth management and insurance. But a turnabout in rhetoric from Chinese authorities — and new rules they slapped suddenly on its lucrative consumer-loan business — signal the once-fertile landscape for the fintech industry has changed. The first casualty was Ant’s $35 billion mega-listing on the eve of its debut in S