Jack Ma, who has not been seen for a long time, was recently rumored to have appeared at a golf course in Hainan, where he lost the IPO of Ant Financial Services.
Both the mainland and foreign media have been paying close attention recently to where Jack Ma, the former richest man on the mainland who disappeared more than 2 months ago due to the setback of Ant Financial Services IPO, has gone. Some bold foreign media speculate that Jack Ma has been restricted in his actions and that the Ant Financial Services he founded will be gradually nationalized. These speculations are certainly a lot of claptrap, but after the Ant Financial IPO was called off, Jack Ma’s financial-related product operations have indeed been continuously restricted by new regulations. It’s hard to say if that’s true, but at least it will be out of sight for quite some time.
While the world was surprised by the temporary withdrawal of Ant Financial’s IPO, and with Beijing’s “anti-monopoly” intent, the successive blows had many worried about Jack Ma’s fate. Why is Jack Ma hiding? The reason is very simple, after stabbing the Ant Financial IPO temporary shouting card, full refund of the big mess, do not wait for the media endlessly, the world to Haiti to ask questions about the causes and consequences? The other day on the Internet several sources of some origin rumored that Ma appeared in Hainan Island, a golf course, someone rushed to call his name from afar, but Ma did not even head back. Obviously, it is still very early to face the media and the public.
Ma did not show up, the outside world still can not stop discussing him. Many believe Ma’s Oct. 24 speech on the Bund was a turning point in his life, and if you look at the numbers from the Ant Financial IPO, it was indeed the pinnacle for Ma and his business. Ant Financial’s IPO, with a total value of $35 billion, is the largest in history; the amount of money subscribed by shareholders on the mainland and in Hong Kong is 19.1 trillion yuan, equivalent to $2.8 trillion, which is the total GDP of the United Kingdom in 2019 and 27% of the total value of the two stock markets in Shenzhen and Shanghai, or half of the market value of Hong Kong stocks. After the IPO, Anthem’s market capitalization could be as high as US$461 billion, 60% higher than the original investment letter’s estimate.
The IPO is priced at 68.8 yuan per share, which translates to HK$80 for Hong Kong H-shares, and its stock code is 688688. The number of 6s and 8s is a shiver, which shows how powerful it is in the securities and financial system. This is why Jack Ma, knowing that the official financial system was against it, dared not only to openly call out to the financial regulators, but also to hold out until the eve of the IPO when he was interviewed by four major regulators before announcing the suspension. It’s not just Jack Ma who is riding the tiger in the Anthem IPO, but also the many people in positions of power and their connections who are participating in the feast.
Eight years ago, Jack Ma said, “I already know where I’m going to end up.” It’s hard to say whether that’s really the case, but at least it’s going to be out of sight for a long time. (Photo / Weibo)
Jack Ma’s current situation reminds many people of Wang Jianlin, the founder of Wanda Group, who was also the richest man in China and the richest man in Asia. He started his career in real estate, and after 2000, the national real estate boom pushed Wang’s Wanda Group to the top, with assets of more than 300 billion yuan in 2012, annual revenue of more than 140 billion yuan, and annual taxes and net profits of tens of billions of dollars. But in reality, like its real estate industry, most of Wanda’s operating capital comes from the banking system, and it uses its bureaucratic connections to move the cannon of bank funds to fight its rivals in the market.
In March 2017, Pan Gongsheng, then deputy governor of the mainland central bank and head of the Foreign Exchange Bureau (who was also one of the four major financial regulators interviewed by Jack Ma), arranged for the acquisition of overseas assets by the bank. representatives of financial regulators), through the arranged official media, alluded to the fact that Wanda enterprises’ massive investment in overseas “has some falsification, in the name of investment, but actually packaged a large amount of asset transfer.” Subsequently, the mainland CCTV interviewed officials and scholars to review the “irrational investment” of certain enterprises, which actually concealed the shortcomings of transferring assets, and the CBRC then began to check the accounts of banks and review the credit risks of several enterprise groups, including Wanda.
Jack Ma talks to tesla founder Musk at an artificial intelligence conference in 2019.
The seasoned Wang Jianlin saw the situation was not good, and within three months all the hotels and cultural tourism industries acquired over the years were packaged and sold, followed by successive sales of overseas assets, which were sold until September 2020 because there were too many assets to clear. Since then, Wang Jianlin has never been seen criticizing economic policies or teaching people about business and life, and he has almost disappeared over the years after being in the news every day.
In the past few years, Jack Ma has met with either heads of state or world-class tycoons or entrepreneurs. The picture shows Jack Ma talking to Bill Gates in 2018.
Wang Jianlin’s huge asset investment tied to the government’s banking and financial system has made him a “too big to fail” enterprise, which could cause a systemic financial crisis if the enterprise has problems. Jack Ma’s case is similar, and because it is a financial service industry, the connection is more direct and the amount is more huge. It is estimated that Ant Financial is playing with RMB 40 billion in usurious loans on a scale of 2 trillion, which is several times higher than the amount of real estate, and if this is added to the scale of significant expansion after the IPO, banks and private investment trusts will be tied up.
If the most scenic businessman 5 to 10 years ago was Wang Jianlin, the most scenic in the past two years is Ma Yun. He is in the news for running elite high-barrier universities for businesspeople, meeting with other heads of state, and having big-time conversations with global celebrities like Bill Gates and Musk, and is sought after by the media and the internet every day. 2018 Ma said that Alipay can be handed over to the state whenever the state needs it, and now Ant Financial Services has grown into a financial behemoth with 1 billion individual users, more than 80 million institutional users, and 118 trillion RMB in digital payment transactions, it has become the most important object of anti-monopoly on the mainland, and may be forced to dismantle or partially nationalize in the future. In short, Ma’s road of playing with electronic payments and usurious finance has come to an end, and now even the market mothers know that Ma is finished, and he may have to disappear from the public eye for quite some time.
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