Jack Ma Plans To Cede Control of Ant Group (wsj.com) 26
Billionaire Jack Ma plans to relinquish control of Ant Group, WSJ reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter, part of the fintech giant's effort to move away from affiliate Alibaba Group after more than a year of extraordinary pressure from Chinese regulators. From a report: The authorities halted Ant's $34 billion-plus IPO in 2020 at the eleventh hour and are forcing the technology firm to reorganize as a financial holding company regulated by China's central bank. As the overhaul progresses, Ant is taking the opportunity to reduce the company's reliance on Mr. Ma, who founded Alibaba.
Mr. Ma, a 57-year-old former English teacher and one of China's most prominent entrepreneurs, has been the target of government action that appears designed to reduce his influence and the power of his companies. He has controlled Ant since he carved its precursor assets out of Alibaba more than a decade ago. Over time he built it into a company that owns the Alipay payments network with more than one billion users, an investing platform that houses what was once the world's largest money-market fund, and a large microlending business. Ant was expected to be valued at more than $300 billion had it gone public. Diminishing his ownership could put back a potential revival of Ant's IPO for a year or more. Chinese securities regulations require a timeout on public listings for companies that have gone through a recent change in control.
Mr. Ma, a 57-year-old former English teacher and one of China's most prominent entrepreneurs, has been the target of government action that appears designed to reduce his influence and the power of his companies. He has controlled Ant since he carved its precursor assets out of Alibaba more than a decade ago. Over time he built it into a company that owns the Alipay payments network with more than one billion users, an investing platform that houses what was once the world's largest money-market fund, and a large microlending business. Ant was expected to be valued at more than $300 billion had it gone public. Diminishing his ownership could put back a potential revival of Ant's IPO for a year or more. Chinese securities regulations require a timeout on public listings for companies that have gone through a recent change in control.
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Re:How very progressive of China (Score:4, Insightful)
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Which country is "here"? Because by world standards, Biden is right wing and even Bernie Sanders is only just barely left of center. [politicalcompass.org]
So who are the left wingers you are referring to?
Re: How very progressive of China (Score:2)
World standards? The world isn't Europe. Europeans like to think that, but it's just not the case. Not only that but charts like these are pretty well meaningless. From where I sit, Europe looks anything but libertarian. They have all sorts of limits on free speech that the American constitution wouldn't allow, many of them don't even allow you to own a utility knife let alone a firearm, they pretend to care about privacy but then if you want to access a violent video game or pornography on the Internet, th
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Obviously anything far left of my beliefs is extreme left wing, and anything far right of my beliefs is extreme right wing.
It's all relative.
However the political compass is a useful tool to see not just leftiness or rightiness but also how authoritarian or anti authoritarian a government is, and on that.
if you have a standard set of questions or specific criteria that are being used to evaluate candidates, then it is valid to plot those and show the relative position of those, so from that aspect, the poli
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Possibly, but this one isn't. For starters, I'd argue it's missing another dimension that most people seem to ignore yet is pretty important, which is that of collectivist vs individualist. For another part, they seem to have their own subjective views as to what counts as each category.
What the hell does right and left even mean? That is, what makes somebody left, and what makes them right. Among other problems, it varies heavily between countries, and even then, between the particular era you're talking a
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The political compass is by far the perfect tool - I think that extreme libertarian is anarchist - and they probably should have labelled the bottom of the graph as such - complete lack of government or control systems.
Definitely there could be more dimensions for the political compass - but most humans struggle to visualise three dimensions of data, let alone 4 or more, and this is primarily a visual tool.
For starters, I think you could have theocratic vs atheist, though of course a lot of those values are
Re: How very progressive of China (Score:2)
I didn't say left wingers, I said progressives. Left and right are basically meaningless terms. Communists don't believe in private property, but progressives do. China is what happens when communists realize that you can't actually do away with private property without turning your production to shit and having everybody starve.
So what you end up with in China is something more akin to a progressive. Their ideas about democracy are similar too, only really differing in execution. Their ideas about civil ri
Two-faced authoritarians like you are not clever. (Score:1)
Pull the Confederate flag out of your asshole, Biff, and try talking from the other end.
That's nice. (Score:2)
He's still live.
He publicly criticized the CCP (Score:5, Insightful)
But that jig is up. The party has had enough of the tech boss freedoms. They are locking down control. If Ma stays in China, he will find himself a) extremely wealthy but b) powerless. This is not a stable situation. The government will find a way to drain Ma of his fortune. It might take a decade or two, but that's what happens.
The way China is moving at the moment, they are due for a series of bad purges and back-steps within a generation or two. The wealthy people would be smart to get out before that lands in their front yard.
If Ma is as smart as he claims to be, he'll decamp for Europe or the US, and take as much of his money as he can. He'll probably be able to get out 2 or 3% of his wealth, which would still amount to a billion or two. At least in the west, he'll actually get to keep it.
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I mean, how the fuck could he be loyal to such a country as that, that seems bent on fucking him over, even after all the wealth he's generated for them as well as himself?
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I doubt the CCP would allow him to leave the country at this point. They'll simply conjure up flimsy charges, national security, whatever.
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What has bolstered the chinese economy? (Score:2)
People like Jack Ma.
What does China do, "de-entrepreneur" them, will that curb or boost such ventures that built Shenzen, Silicon Valley and so on?
Yes, you are right it will boost that because people like that.
But from my western perspective, this is great because it will have detrimental effects on the chinese economy which gives space to western economy, which could not cope with that rapid economy.
bad for: Jack Ma
good for: the West(c)
Fuck jack ma (Score:2)
Guy preached that people should work 6 days a week 12 hours a day, fuck him in the ass with a jagged rusty stick.
Re: Fuck jack ma (Score:2)
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the CCP's problem with him was purely that he got too much money and 'influence'.
I am in absolutely no doubt that the CCP would also love it if everybody was working 72 hours a week, and were probably just more pissed that they didn't think of it first..
Re: Fuck jack ma (Score:2)
Headed to the US (Score:1)
He should purchase a yacht! (Score:1)