Jack Ma is not missing, probably low in Hangzhou: report

• According to CNBC reporter David Faber, Alibaba and Ant Group founder Jack Ma is not absent, as had been assumed.
• Faber said on Tuesday that Ma was not “captured” or “taken”, but instead is intentionally less visible and is likely in Hangzhou, where Alibaba is based, according to a source.
• Yahoo Finance earlier reported that Ma has been missing since China snatched the Ant Monster from a $ 37 billion IPO in early November.
• The Chinese billionaire publicly snubbed the country’s financial regulatory system, prompted China to dig into Ant’s finances, established new lending rules that disqualified his IPO, and then ordered the company to review its activities and “return to its origins of payment”.
• Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.

Alibaba founder Jack Ma is not absent as reported, CNBC anchor David Faber reported Tuesday morning.

“He’s less visible, on purpose,” Faber said after noting that he had closely covered Ma and his businesses. “And you can expect that to be the case for a while.”

Faber, citing sources, said Ma was simply shutting down amid the Chinese Communist Party’s crackdown on Alibaba and Ant Group. Yahoo Finance reported over the weekend that Ma had not been seen publicly for two months since China pulled its $ 37 billion IPO from its fintech, Ant Group, in early November.

“He may not have shown up, but he’s not absent,” Faber told CNBC on Tuesday. “He was not captured, he was not taken away, this is not a situation of President Wu,” referring to the president of Anbang Insurance who was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2018.

According to Duncan Clark, chairman of Chinese technology company BDA China, Reuters previously reported that Ma may have been ordered to “keep a low profile” due to China’s regulatory crackdown.

Faber said Ma was “most likely” in Hangzhou, where Alibaba’s headquarters are located. Ma retired from the company’s main operations in 2019.

Ma’s Ant Group was set to raise a huge amount when it went public on November 5. in Ant’s financial risks following Ma’s comments.

Read more: How Chinese regulators shut down Ant’s potential $ 37 billion IPO

China responded by introducing new micro-lending rules that impacted Ant and disqualified Ant when it went public. The government withdrew its listing in Shanghai and Ant voluntarily ceased its listing in Hong Kong on the same day.

Ma reportedly offered to donate parts of Ant Group to the Chinese government on November 2 in an attempt to appease them over her comments. “You can use any of the platforms that Ant has, as long as the country needs it,” Ma reportedly told regulators, according to the Wall Street Journal.

But the offer failed to convince China, and the government has since ordered Ant Group to overhaul its financial operations and “go back to its payment origins.” China is also conducting an antitrust investigation into Alibaba.

Read more: China has reportedly demanded that big Chinese tech companies like Alibaba process stolen US data for the country’s top spies on demand.

As Business Insider’s Allana Akhtar reported, this isn’t the first time powerful businessmen have disappeared in China after clashing with the government.

Asset manager Xiao Jianhua, for example, was kidnapped from a Hong Kong hotel in 2017 and taken into custody in China after regulators accused him and others of hijacking investors from country’s stock markets. China then took control of parts of its business.