China's JD.com Says Finance Unit Raises $1 Billion

BEIJING -- Chinese e-commerce company JD.com Inc. said its financial subsidiary has raised 6.65 billion yuan ($1 billion) in financing, as competition intensifies among the country's Internet giants to ramp up hugely popular offerings of online financial services.

The financing round, which counts as its lead investors venture-capital firm Sequoia Capital China and China Taiping Insurance, values JD.com's JD Finance subsidiary at 46.65 billion yuan ($7 billion) on a fully-diluted, post-investment basis, JD.com said in a news release.

JD.com said it would maintain majority ownership in JD Finance and that the transaction is expected to be completed in the first half of this year.

The move comes as Internet giants Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd.'s own financial affiliates have ramped up fundraising efforts. JD.com is Alibaba's main rival in e-commerce and is backed by Tencent.

Earlier this month, Alibaba's financial affiliate Ant Financial Services Group, a major force in China's online finance sector, said it had begun its second round of financing in its latest step toward a much-anticipated public listing. Ant Financial operates the popular Alipay online payment platform in China that says it has 400 million annual active users.

In its first round of financing last year, Ant Financial raised more than 12 billion yuan ($1.9 billion) from outside investors including China's national social security fund and private-equity firm Primavera Capital, led by former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. partner Fred Hu. That round gave Ant Financial a valuation in the tens of billions of dollars, people familiar with the situation said at the time.

Social networking and gaming giant Tencent's online-banking affiliate, WeBank, is seeking to raise around $1 billion in fresh funds, people familiar with the situation told The Wall Street Journal in November. Tencent also operates a competing payments platform known as WePay.

Write to Gillian Wong at gillian.wong@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 17, 2016 21:25 ET (02:25 GMT)

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