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JACK Ma, the former English teacher who co-founded Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. with $ 60,000, is poised to become the world’s 11th richest person after Ant Group Co. listed the stock for a record initial public offering.
Ma’s 8.8% stake is worth $ 27.4 billion based on the price of shares in Hong Kong and Shanghai. That will lift the 56-year-old’s fortune to $ 71.1 billion on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, beating that of Oracle Corp.’s Larry Ellison, L’Oreal SA heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers and individual members of the Waltons, whose family owns Walmart Inc.
Ant’s massive listing is poised to boost the fortunes of a group of early investors and employees. The company has given stock-based awards to staff since 2014 and at least 18 other people have become billionaires since the IPO. Lucy Peng, head of the payments giant as of August, is Ant’s largest individual owner after Ma, with a $ 5.2 billion stake. President Eric Jing’s stake is worth $ 3.1 billion.
Ant will raise nearly $ 35 billion, topping Saudi Aramco’s $ 29 billion sale last year. Shanghai’s shares were priced at 68.8 yuan ($ 10.27) each, and its Hong Kong shares were priced at Hong Kong dollars ($ 10.32) each. The company could raise another $ 5.2 billion if it exercises its green shoe options, bringing its market value to around $ 320 billion. That would be more than JPMorgan Chase & Co. and four times bigger than Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
The big winners on the list own their stakes through two Hangzhou-registered limited companies that together own about 40% of Ant. Alibaba, in turn, owns a third of the fintech firm. Hong Kong’s Li Ka-shing, the family behind a French supermarket giant, the son of a Taiwanese real estate billionaire and Chinese retail magnate Shen Guojun are among the other owners who have invested in the company over the year.
Ant started when Alibaba launched the Alipay payments app in 2004 as an escrow service for buyers and sellers on Ma’s e-commerce website. In 2013, they were given the ability to save money and earn interest on balances. stored in your accounts. The company then began offering credit to small businesses, diversifying its focus on consumer finance, and eventually expanding to services such as blockchain, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.
Since co-founding Alibaba with Ma, Peng has held different roles. She created Alibaba’s human resources department and, after helping create Ant, was its CEO until Jing took over in 2016. Two years later, she succeeded her as CEO of the fintech company.
Both Peng and Jing are members of the Alibaba Partnership, a group of 36 people with the power to determine annual cash bonuses for all members of management. – Bloomberg
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