Jack Ma, the 56-year-old billionaire founder of Alibaba and Ant Group has been reportedly ‘missing’ for about two months, according to reports.
Speculations about Mr. Ma’s whereabouts were first sparked when he did not appear in the final episode of a reality show, where he is a judge.
Ma has been in the spotlight recently as China has cracked down on his business empire. In late December, Alibaba, the country’s biggest e-commerce company, sometimes referred to as “the Amazon of China.” was under anti-trust investigations. Earlier, last year, the Chinese government had introduced regulations that halted the Ant Group IPO, which is a fintech enterprise owned by Mr. Ma.
Mr. Ma, among the wealthiest individuals in the world and had earlier critiqued China’s “pawnshop financial regulators and state-owned banks.” Calling for reform in the country’s regulatory system, he held the system responsible for “stifling business innovation” and called China’s global banking regulations an “old people’s club.”
The investigation by the authorities on the operations of Alibaba,
potentially the world’s largest e-commerce company, co-founded by Mr. Ma,
led the company’s shares to drop by a quarter since their peak, wiping over $10 billion from his personal fortune.
The Chinese billionaire has not made any public appearance since November, due to which the mystery around his whereabouts has only deepened.