The Bloomberg Billionaires Index reported that Jack Ma founder of Alibaba and AliExpress has lost about $11 billion, dropping his net worth to $50.1 billion. Last year the fortune of the Chinese billionaire reached $61.7 billion.
In November 2020, Ant Financial the fintech arm of the Jack Ma owned tech conglomerate was set to raise $34 billion jointly on its listing on the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchanges making the biggest stock market debut in history.
These plans fell through after Chinese regulators launched a last-minute antitrust investigation and suspended the transaction. This caused the shares of Alibaba, a company that owns 33% of Ant Group, to fall and with them the fortune of the businessman. Jack Ma was on the verge of becoming the richest man in the Asian country again.
As reported by BBC the Hong Kong Stock Exchange commented that Ant Group “may not meet standards for listing and transparency requirements.” He also suggested that “recent changes” in the regulation of digital finance could have become an obstacle.
The State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) declared in a statement that they are investigating Alibaba group for “suspicion of monopolistic conduct.”
The only information brought to the public domain is that the investigation is related to the exclusivity policy of the group, which forces merchants to sell only on Alibaba and prevents them from doing so on other rival platforms.
The Central Bank of China ordered a reorganization of operations for Ant Group to rectify its insurance, loan and wealth management services.
Ant Financial has pumped billions of dollars across several companies in India like, Paytm, Snapdeal, Zomato, Big basket etc. The investment is close to around $2.7 billion.
