Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, has disappeared from the public eye since the Chinese government’s crackdown on his company. His fortune has fallen to around $25 billion after the government stopped the Ant Group’s IPO in 2020 and fined Alibaba $2.75 billion for unfair practices the following year.
Ma will now only have 6.2% of the voting rights in Ant Group, as the company wants to make sure “no shareholder, alone or jointly with other parties, will have control.” This is the latest setback for Ma, who used to be China’s poster boy for business and has retreated from the public eye in recent years.
Ma was a Communist Party member and started Alibaba in 1999 in his bedroom in Hangzhou. The company became a huge e-commerce and fintech company, and Ma became very famous. However, Ant Group’s future is unclear as there are concerns that its personal finance products take too much money from ordinary Chinese people. Ma used to be seen as a benevolent and unconventional billionaire, but he has faced problems in China because of his wealth.
He is not as active in the public eye now, only appearing at charity events and occasionally traveling overseas.
