Jack Ma, a 56-year-old billionaire founder of Alibaba and Ant Group, has not appeared in public for over two months, according to Jessica Yun in a Yahoo Finance article. He recently found himself in the spotlight when China decided to put pressure on his business empire.
In late December, Chinese regulators launched an antitrust investigation against Alibaba, the country's largest e-commerce company sometimes referred to as China's Amazon. And in November, China introduced regulations that halted the initial public offering of Ant Group, Mr. Ma's financial technology company.
The rules were introduced a few weeks after Jack Ma criticized China's financial regulation at a conference in Shanghai. The billionaire reportedly called China's financial management principles "a club for the elderly," and said the country cannot use the methods of the past to regulate the future.
Blair Silverberg, chief executive of a loan-financier startup Capital, told Business Insider's Katie Canales in November that the rules were in place so that the Chinese government could demonstrate its superiority over Jack Ma.
The Financial Times reported that in November, Mr. Ma was removed from his post as a judge at his African talent show "Business Heroes of Africa." An Alibaba spokesman explained to reporters that due to a conflict with the billionaire's business schedule, the jury for the finale of the show, which was filmed in November and has yet to be released, will indeed not be Jack Ma. “We have nothing to add other than this,” he said when answering questions about the whereabouts of the Alibaba founder.
Until recently, Mr. Ma was China's richest man with a net worth of more than $ 60 billion. But in the past two months, his property valuation has dropped by $ 12 billion due to China tightening rules for the financial technology industry. According to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, Jack Ma is now worth $ 50.6 billion, making him the fourth richest man in China.
Curiously, in an August 2019 video interview, another Chinese billionaire, Guo Wengui, who fled the country in 2014, said that Jack Ma could get into trouble in 2020 because the Chinese government wants to take over his lucrative Ant company. Group. Last week, the Chinese government ordered the curtailment of operations by Ant Group, which owns China's largest digital payment platform Alipay, expressing doubts about the adequacy of governance.
Source: businessinsider.com
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