Phew... Alibaba stock jumped ~6% yesterday on news that its multibillionaire founder Jack Ma is reportedly just lying low — not missing. Ma hasn't been seen in public since November, when he missed an appearance on... his own TV show. Ma went from being the only guy who couldn't land a job at KFC, to one of the most well-known businessmen in the world — with a $650B company to boot (Alibaba, aka: "Amazon of China"). But now his "babies" are in trouble...
B(old) choice of words... China was likely not thrilled to have its financial regulations referred to as "an old people's club" — which Ma reportedly did at that fateful conference in Shanghai. But comments like that aren't illegal, and can't be the basis for a suspended IPO or an investigation... Or can they?
Chinese companies' #1 stakeholder = the Chinese gov’t... Alibaba has over 750M customers, and Ant has over 1B users. This story is a reminder that no matter how huge a company gets, China doesn't necessarily need to justify itself to reign it in. If anything, the massive scale of those companies can make China even more keen on keeping a hand on the wheel: according to Chinese officials, Beijing is trying to shrink Ma's empire and potentially take a larger stake in his businesses.