Ma’s Deal
Jack Ma is one of the most powerful businessmen in China and serves as CEO of Alibaba, one of China’s most successful private businesses. Although Jack Ma is indeed rich and powerful, he has a rocky relationship with the Chinese government who have aimed to make an example out of him and send a strong message to the country’s powerful tech companies. For example, back in April of 2021 Alibaba was slapped with a record $2.8 billion fine. The fine came after regulators concluded Alibaba was engaging in anti-competitive behavior, acting like a monopoly. In fact, during this period Ma disappeared after Chinese regulators began investigating Alibaba. Regulators were looking to see if the company was preventing sellers from selling their products on rival e-commerce platforms.
Fast forward a few months and the situation has possibly improved for Jack. This is because, Ant Group Co (an affiliate company of the Chinese Alibaba Group) is in talks with the state-owned enterprises in China to create a credit scoring company that will place consumer data under regulators. Specifically, Ant would be giving some control over the data regarding the financial habits of Chinese citizens. The amount of data would be immense as over one billion individuals use Ant’s Alipay app to make transactions. In China, the public and private sector do not exist independently and are often intertwined in deep and powerful relationships.
What do you think about Jack Ma? And do you think what he’s doing is justifiable?
I am not a financial advisor and my comments should never be taken as financial advice. Investments come with risk, so always do your research and analysis beforehand.