Alibaba and Ant Group Founder Jack Ma Hasn’t Been Seen for 2 Months
The Chinese billionaire Jack Ma is thought to be missing, Jessica Yun reported for Yahoo Finance on Sunday.
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Jack Ma, the 56-year-old billionaire founder of Alibaba and Ant Group, , Jessica Yun reported for Yahoo Finance on Sunday.
Ma has been in the spotlight recently as China has cracked down on his business empire. In late December, Chinese regulators , the country’s biggest e-commerce company, sometimes referred to as “the Amazon of China.” And in November, China introduced regulations that halted what would have been , Ma’s fintech company.
The new rules came weeks after Ma at a conference in Shanghai. Ma reportedly dismissed the global financial regulations used by China as “an old people’s club” and said that “we can’t use yesterday’s methods to regulate the future.”
Blair Silverberg, the CEO of the debt-financing startup Capital, that the regulations were introduced “so the government can assert its supremacy over Jack Ma.”
In November, Ma was replaced as a judge on the African talent show he founded, “Africa’s Business Heroes,” . The talent show did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment, but an Alibaba representative said Ma could no longer be on the judging panel for the show’s finale, which was filmed in November but has not yet been released,” due to a scheduling conflict.”
“We do not have anything to add beyond that,” the representative said in response to questions about Ma’s whereabouts.
Ma in 2019.
Until recently, Ma was , with a fortune of more than $60 billion. But Ma’s net worth has over the past two months as China has tightened the rules for the fintech industry. Ma is now worth $50.6 billion, making him the fourth-richest person in China, .
As speculation about Ma’s whereabouts spread, a prediction about Ma from another billionaire Chinese businessman recirculated on social media.
In , Guo Wengui, and has described himself as a whistleblower exposing corruption in the country, said Ma would likely end up in jail or dead in the next year because China wanted to “take back” Ma’s lucrative Ant Group.
Last week, the Chinese government ordered Ant Group, which owns Alipay, China’s largest digital-payment platform, after expressing concerns that its corporate governance was “not sound.”
A representative for Ant Group did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment for this story.
Jack Ma, the 56-year-old billionaire founder of Alibaba and Ant Group, , Jessica Yun reported for Yahoo Finance on Sunday.
Ma has been in the spotlight recently as China has cracked down on his business empire. In late December, Chinese regulators , the country’s biggest e-commerce company, sometimes referred to as “the Amazon of China.” And in November, China introduced regulations that halted what would have been , Ma’s fintech company.
The new rules came weeks after Ma at a conference in Shanghai. Ma reportedly dismissed the global financial regulations used by China as “an old people’s club” and said that “we can’t use yesterday’s methods to regulate the future.”
