Ant Financial is too big to be described as a unicorn. Rather than being worth a few billion dollars, the Chinese payment firm affiliated to Alibaba is planning to raise money at a price that would value it at an eye-popping $150 billion ahead of a possible initial public offering. For such an exotic beast, investors might need to resort to some exotic valuation techniques. Sizing up Ant, analysts might normally start by projecting future revenue or earnings, just as they would a regular company. The trouble is that no other company does so many things, or comes with as

Jack Ma may be giving a rival bidder a smarter way to win an M&A fight. The Alibaba chief executive’s payments division, Ant Financial, has sweetened its offer to buy MoneyGram to $1.2 billion. That’s 20 percent higher than what interloper Euronet proffered. Cost cuts alone cannot justify it making a new counteroffer. Given Anbang’s struggles to close its deal with Fidelity & Guaranty Life, Euronet is better off waiting to see if regulators clear the way. Ant’s new terms represent a 64 percent premium to MoneyGram’s share price before talks started and value the company at 18 times this