Jack Ma Gives Up Control of Ant Group
The billionaire founder of the FinTech Giant Ant Group, Jack Ma, will give up control of the company following a regulatory crackdown.
Ant Group has announced that no one will have overall control after the change.
Mr Ma has been absent from the public eye since openly criticising the financial sector in China in 2020.
His criticism resulted in an abrupt halt in Ant Group’s planned £26bn stock market flotation in November 2020, which would have been the world’s largest flotation.
Ant Group owns the main online payment system in China and world’s largest mobile payment platform Alipay, which serves over 1.3 billion users and 80 million merchants.
Mr Ma directly and indirectly controls more than 50% of Ant Group, but following the changes in governance structure, he will control just over 6%.
In a statement, Ant Group announced that the shareholding structure will also change. The Group is in the final stages of a two-year restructuring which has been driven by regulators. According to Reuters, Chinese authorities are expected to impose a fine of over $1bn on the FinTech firm.
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