Miljardären Jack Ma får ge upp kontrollen över Ant

Ma Yun eller Jack Ma, född 10 september 1964 i Hangzhou i Zhejiang, är en kinesisk företagsledare som är grundare och styrelseordförande för det kinesiska IT-konglomeratet Alibaba Group Holding Limited. Han var även vd för Alibaba mellan 1999 och 2013.Ma avlade en kandidatexamen i engelska vid Hangzhou Normal University. Den amerikanska ekonomitidskriften Forbes rankade honom som världens 31:a rikaste med en förmögenhet på 42,6 miljarder amerikanska dollar för den 26 oktober 2021.

Ant Group (Chinese: 蚂蚁集团; pinyin: Mǎyǐ jítuán), formerly known as Ant Financial, is an affiliate company of the Chinese conglomerate Alibaba Group. The group owns the world's largest mobile (digital) payment platform Alipay, which serves over 1.3 billion users and 80 million merchants, with total payment volume (TPV) reaching ¥118 trillion RMB in June 2020. It is the second largest financial services corporation in the world, behind Visa. In March 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported that Ant's flagship Tianhong Yu'e Bao money-market fund was the largest in the world, with over 588 million users, or more than a third of China's population, contributing cash to it.In October 2020, Ant Group was set to raise US$34.5 billion in the world's largest IPO at the time, valuing the company at US$313 billion. On the eve of the IPO, China stopped the process from moving forward. It was reported that the Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping personally scuttled the Ant IPO. On 12 April 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported that under the pressure from the Chinese government, Ant Group would be transformed into a financial holding company overseen by China's state-controlled central bank.In July 2022, Chinese authorities give a tentative green light to Ant Group to revive its initial public offering plans in both Shanghai and Hong Kong.