- Alibaba founder Jack Ma appeared again at a restaurant in Bangkok, Thailand, on Friday.
- Ma’s photo was posted hours before Ant Group said Ma was giving up control of the company.
- Ant Group abandoned a highly successful fleet in 2020 shortly after Ma criticized Chinese regulations.
- For more stories, visit www.BusinessInsider.co.za.
Jack Ma, the elusive billionaire founder of Alibaba, appeared to resurface in Thailand hours before Ant Group said it would relinquish control of the company.
A photo of Ma was posted on Instagram by the Jay Fai restaurant in Bangkok, Thailand, on Friday, which he appeared to have recently visited. “Incredibly humble, we are honored to welcome you and your family to Jay Fai’s,” the restaurant wrote in the caption of her photo.
The post was published hours before it was revealed that Ma was preparing to cede control of the company he founded, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
In a statement published on Saturday, Ant, which owns the world’s largest mobile payment platform Alipay, said it was simplifying voting rights to prevent any shareholder from having a controlling vote.
The move will “further enhance the stability of our corporate structure and the sustainability of our long-term development,” according to the statement.
Ma disappeared from public view in October 2020 after giving a speech criticizing China’s financial regulatory system.
Plans to list Ant Group on the stock market were dropped the following month when Beijing intervened. Once the richest man in China, Ma’s net worth has shrunk by more than $25 billion since he disappeared from public view, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
While Ma does not have an executive role or sit on Ant’s board, he maintained his influence through a separate entity he controlled. The changes announced on Saturday are the latest in a sweeping overhaul at the behest of Chinese authorities.
Ma has kept a very low profile since her encounter with the authorities. The Financial Times suggested in November that she had been living in Tokyo for six months, staying out of public view and socializing mainly in private members’ clubs.
Some think the move could revive hopes of floating Any, according to Reuters, but Chinese regulations requiring a pause in listings after a change in control may delay such a move by at least a year.
