Chinese billionaire Jack Ma reportedly offered parts of his Ant Group to Beijing in a bid to salvage the company’s planned initial public offering last month, just days before regulators halted the massive IPO, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The alleged offer was reportedly made on Nov. 2, when Ma and other Ant Group executives were summoned to meet Chinese regulators and central bank officials, the Journal said. That meeting occurred just three days before trading in the company’s shares was scheduled to begin on the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock markets, on Nov. 5.

“You can take any of the platforms Ant has, as long as the country needs it,” Ma told the authorities, according to the report, which cited sources close to the matter.

Ant Group has not denied the report, stating merely that details of the Nov. 2 meeting were confidential.

The abrupt shutdown of Ant’s US$34 billion IPO, which was set to be the largest in global history, came after Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered regulators to look into its risks, the Journal reported last month.

Eventually the listing plan was called off, and there was no sign of Beijing taking up Ma’s offer, the report said. Instead, regulators were studying whether services offered by Ant – such as Alipay and other Ant businesses – posed the risk of a monopoly.

“The odds of nationalizing at least parts of the company are not zero,” said a Beijing-based government advisor, according to the Journal’s report.

Beijing may already have taken over some of Ant Group’s platforms and incorporated them in the interbank operations of NetsUnion Clearing Corporation, which is China’s central platform for processing online transactions, said Martin Chorzempa, an analyst at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Over the years, Ant Group and tech giant Tencent have expanded their fintech and online finance businesses, launching e-wallet and online loan functions while distancing themselves from government supervision. The expansion of these large tech companies and their ability to accumulate wealth has reportedly worried China’s central government.

The two groups were recently fined for breaching the anti-monopoly law by failing to report various business acquisitions.

Ma has not made any public appearances since Ant Group’s IPO plans collapsed. He was last seen in public when he made a speech at the second Bund Summit in Shanghai on Oct. 24, where he said China’s financial sector posed “no systematic risks” because there was “no system.” His remark was said to have angered Beijing, the report said.

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