Jack Ma's Ant Group: World's biggest market debut suspended

The stock market debut by Chinese tech giant Ant Group has been abruptly halted.

Ant, backed by Jack Ma, billionaire founder of e-commerce platform Alibaba, was set to sell shares worth about $34.4bn (£26.5bn) on Thursday.

The listing in Shanghai and Hong Kong would have been the biggest stock market debut to date.

But Chinese authorities have cited "major issues" as the reason behind the eleventh hour suspension.

Ant runs Alipay, the main online payment system in China, where cash, cheques and credit cards have long been eclipsed by e-payment devices and apps.