Such huge IPOs are major liquidity events, minting new cohorts of high net worth individuals and also a test of the buoyancy and health of financial markets more generally.

A raft of banks could miss out on earning a total of about $400 million after the IPO in Shanghai and Hong Kong of Ant Financial was put on hold last week, according to the South China Morning Post. 

Chinese regulators halted what was expected to be the world’s biggest initial public offering of all time, raising as much as almost $40 billion. Ant is affiliated to Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. That firm’s own IPO in 2014 raised $25 billion.

Ant delayed its offering for 48 hours before its IPO last Thursday following a meeting with Chinese financial regulators, saying that it led to a “significant change” in the company’s business environment and might result in the fintech company not fulfilling its listing requirements or disclosure rules.

The SCMP report said that the Hong Kong leg of the IPO included two dozen investment banks, with Citigroup, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and CICC serving as joint sponsors on the listing. The banks were due to share a piece of a 1 per cent underwriting commission on the transaction.