Jack Ma's current fortune is estimated to be less than half what it was three years ago, when he delivered a landmark speech that derailed what was then the world's largest stock offering.
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimated on Wednesday that the business magnate’s fortune had fallen by $4.1 billion over the past year, a plunge driven by a sharp drop in the valuation of Ant Group, the tech giant he co-founded but no longer controls.
Ma, who co-founded e-commerce company Alibaba, holds a 9.9% stake in Ant, Bloomberg reported.
The businessman, once Asia's richest man, now holds a net worth of about $30 billion, less than half his peak of $61.2 billion in 2020.
Ant Group, known primarily for operating China's widely used digital payments system Alipay, is currently on a share buyback spree and is valuing itself at $78.5 billion, down 75% from $230 billion in 2020.
Billionaire Jack Ma - Photo: Getty Images
Ant and Alibaba have lost a combined market capitalization of about $877 billion, according to CNN data based on their peak stock prices in October 2020, when the entrepreneur was vocally criticizing Chinese financial regulators and banks.
Mr. Ma’s criticism, which came just days before Ant’s IPO in Shanghai and Hong Kong, has sparked China’s largest-ever private-sector investigation and led to tighter regulatory scrutiny of other tech companies in the country.
Regulators canceled Ant's $37 billion IPO in November 2020 and asked the company to restructure its business.
Since then, Mr. Ma has largely avoided the spotlight. In recent years, he has spent time in Japan, with his friend and Alibaba investor, SoftBank CEO Masa Son, and in Hong Kong. He has also begun working as a visiting professor at a Tokyo university, and has devoted more time to philanthropy.
He has also stepped back from active management of the companies he founded.
In January, he relinquished control of Ant Group after two years of restructuring its business from consumer lending to insurance at the request of regulators. He also stepped down as chairman of Alibaba in 2019, after turning 55.
Ant and its affiliates were also fined $984 billion by Chinese financial regulators this week for violations of consumer protection and corporate governance rules. Analysts believe the fine signals the end of the financial probe.
In March, Alibaba announced plans to split into six separate units, each led by a CEO and board of directors. The company said it hoped the new structure would give it more flexibility and deliver greater value to investors.
Nguyen Quang Minh (according to CNN)
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