With the Alibaba founder Jack Ma, one of the most famous entrepreneurs in China has apparently disappeared from the public for weeks. This was reported by several media outlets after the Financial Times drew attention to the fact that Ma was removed from the TV show Africa’s Business Heroes. The final of the show was recorded in November without Ma, after he had personally assessed the participants’ business ideas. He is now no longer even listed as a jury member on the show he himself created. Ma drew the wrath of the leadership in Beijing in the fall.

Prevented record IPO The beginning of November was the planned record IPO of the Ant Group. The group is the financial offshoot of the world’s largest online trading platform Alibaba and was about to have what is probably the largest IPO of all time. The Shanghai Stock Exchange had announced the unusual move with significant changes in the “regulatory environment”, Jack Ma and several managers had been summoned by China’s central bank and other regulators. Ma had previously expressed sharp criticism of local and global regulators and accused them of holding back innovation. Since then, it has been speculated that he has not only drawn the wrath of China’s financiers. Alibabas shares lost almost 30 percent of their value in early November.

As reported by Yahoo News , the Chinese billionaire has not made a public appearance since this conflict. That feeds the speculation about the Chinese action against the world-famous entrepreneur. At the end of December, it became known that China’s antitrust authorities had initiated investigations against Alibaba and were investigating alleged monopoly offenses. The country’s central bank had then asked the Ant Group to concentrate on its core business with payment services and to overhaul parts of its business areas. Among other things, the group is behind the popular payment service Alipay with its more than one billion users.

(mho)