[chewz]

Exactly - Russia, China, Indonesia, Turkey and other countries have tons of beaucratic regulation but in real life they are rarely vigorously enforced when you are small and keep a low profile. Then, when you grow you can pay for rules not being enforced. Only when you get really big the system is comming for you as in the case of Ant.

This is acctually convenient for some enterpreneurs who understand the system as it makes it easy and cheap to start small and experiment, see how the things work out.

This is the reverse of Western systems where usually small guy is expected to bear the costs of all the rules and regulations while big corporations get free pass.

So the Ant IPO situation was to be expected this way or the other. Mr Ma had been trying to cash out but he had been to slow to act.