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Jack Ma, the entrepreneur looking for wealth behind the Chinese e-commerce giant, Alibaba, plans to give the reins to the company he co-founded nearly two decades ago.
It is planned to detail succession plans on Monday, his 54th birthday, ushering in a new era for the $ 420 billion company that has grown from a webpage operated in Ma's apartment to a leading global technology company.
The Alibaba empire covers everything from cloud computing and digital banking to online messaging and film production.
Ma, a fervent defender of globalization, will begin to emerge from her role in the age of politics. The United States and China are engaged in a growing trade war. Meanwhile, the Chinese economy is showing signs of slowing down.
Duncan Clark, author of "Alibaba: The House Jack Ma Built," told CNN that he doubted that the announcement of Ma's retirement was caused by geopolitical issues.
"He has long talked about his desire to return to his roots as a teacher," Clark said. So his retirement should come "no big surprise".
"Hollywood story"
Ma was born into a poor family in Hangzhou, in Zhejiang Province, in eastern China, in 1964. He struggled in school and said in interviews that he had been rejected 10 times and rejected several times.
He failed his entrance exam twice before studying at Hangzhou Teachers College. He graduated in 1988 and continued to teach English for several years.
Ma described his rise to one of China's biggest technology magnates as a "Hollywood story" in an interview with The New York Times in 2005.
He told the point of sale that he had gone to California in 1995 to help recover a debt that a US businessman owed to a Chinese company. But Ma said the man had a rifle and held it in captivity in a Malibu mansion for two days. He escaped after promising the businessman that he would become his partner in a internet business.
Ma did not get back into contact with the man, but he interviewed friends in Seattle on the Internet, according to the Times. Revitalized by technology, Ma returned to China, where the Internet was still virtually unknown.
"The day we connected to the Web, I invited friends and viewers to my home," he told The Times. "We waited three and a half hours and got half a page.We drank, watched TV and played cards, waiting.But I was so proud.I have proved that the Internet exist. "
Alibaba building
He stopped teaching and borrowed a few thousand dollars to launch China Pages, one of the country's first commercial sites.
When this company failed, it raised about $ 60,000 from friends and investors and co-founded Alibaba.com as a B2B market in 1999. It was supported by giants such as Goldman Sachs (GS) and SoftBank (SFTBF).
The company survived the dot-com crisis in 2000 and, two years later, Alibaba started making profits.
Alibaba gave birth in 2003 to Taobao.com, a barter market similar to eBay. It was a resounding success.
Yahoo, then a technology powerhouse, bought back a major stake in Alibaba in 2005 in a deal valued at $ 4 billion, which also allowed Alibaba to control Yahoo's business in China.
Over the next decade, Alibaba has amassed millions of additional customers and helped change Chinese society by giving working-class workers access to online commerce and creating new jobs.
IPO
Alibaba debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2014 and garnered a record $ 25 billion.
But its debut on the stock market was fragile as the company struggled to meet the high expectations of Wall Street.
That year, Ma gave his opinion in a 60-minute interview with CBS: "We think the number one customer, the number two employee, the number three shareholder." They do not want to buy, that's good … they can sell us. "
Lara Logan, presenter of 60 Minutes, pointed out that in the United States, "the shareholder is usually the first".
"Yeah, and I think they're wrong," he says. "The shareholder, good I respect them.But they are the third.Because you take care of the customer, take care of the employees, the shareholders will be taken care of."
Ma later expressed regret for the IPO. "If I had another life, I would keep my company private," he said during a speech in 2015.
& # 39; Loves them. Do not marry them.
Like other Chinese technology giants that have emerged over the past two decades, Alibaba has had to go through an economy in which China's ruling Communist Party occupies an important place.
Ma said at 60 minutes that Alibaba was working with the Chinese authorities in matters of national security. But he said that he was still trying to keep the government at bay.
His policy was to "never do business with the government," he said. "Love them, do not marry them."
In a 2014 New Yorker article, writer Jiayang Fan said that Ma and other Chinese success stories "were becoming a problem for the Beijing government, which has historically chosen its heroes and forced them to respond. to the needs of Chinese communists. Party."
"The problem, of course, is that they also draw Chinese attention to Western values," she wrote.
But Alibaba followed the rules of Beijing, which allowed it to continue to grow despite the tightening of control by the Chinese government on the Internet under the presidency of Xi Jinping. Ma defended the Communist Party, accompanied Xi during visits abroad and praised his policy.
Looking forward to
Ma, which is worth about 40 billion dollars, remained the face of Alibaba. But he began to gradually give up control of the company years ago. He left his position as CEO in 2013, retaining the role of executive chairman. Daniel Zhang is the current CEO.
But Clark, the biographer, said that he did not think that Ma would completely break his ties with the company.
"Jack has such a follow-up [and] Moral position within the company, regardless of its title, he said.
Ma holds a stake of over 6% in Alibaba and the company's governance structure gives it and other partners firm control over the board.
He told Bloomberg TV earlier this week that he wanted to return to teach someday. "It's something I think I can do a lot better than being CEO of Alibaba," he said.
Ma also said he wants to follow in the footsteps of Bill Gates, co-founder and co-billionaire of Microsoft, who is committed to yield at least half of his fortune during his lifetime.
He plans to focus on his Jack Ma Foundation, established in 2014, a charitable organization dedicated to improving education, the environment and public health.
CNNMoney (New York) Posted on September 9, 2018 at 4:59 pm
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