Alibaba founder named richest in Asia
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/12/2014 (4016 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
HONG KONG — Jack Ma has become the richest person in Asia.
The 50-year-old founder of Alibaba Group Holding, China’s biggest e-commerce company, passed Li Ka-shing, the Hong Kong property and ports tycoon who has held the top spot in the region since April 5, 2012, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
“I am nothing but happy when young people from China do well,” Li, 86, said via his spokeswoman in Hong Kong.
A spokesman at Alibaba declined to comment on Ma’s net worth.
Ma, a former English teacher who started the Hangzhou, China-based company in his apartment in 1999, has added $25 billion to his fortune this year, riding a 54 per cent surge in the company’s shares since its September initial public offering. He has a $28.6-billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg ranking. Li has a net worth of $28.3 billion.
“The billionaires in China are growing their wealth faster because China’s economy is still developing, with plenty of room for growth,” said Francis Ying, an analyst at Yuanta Research. “Hong Kong is already a mature market.”
Alibaba’s $259-billion market capitalization makes it larger than Amazon.com and eBay combined, and more valuable than all but eight companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.
More than half of Ma’s wealth comes from his 6.3 per cent stake of Alibaba, valued at $16.3 billion. He also controls almost half of the closely held finance unit and owner of Alipay, a service similar to PayPal.
Ma’s interest in the online-payment company is expected to dilute in the next three to five years with new investors or stock distribution to employees. Ma won’t realize any economic benefit from the dilution, Alibaba has said.
Alibaba raised a record $25 billion in its Sept. 18 IPO, selling shares for $68 each.
“If you look at the whole Chinese Internet space as a group, it’s definitely getting very significant,” said Tony Chu, a money manager for RS Investment, which oversees about $22.3 billion. Alibaba has become “a global stock which you cannot ignore,” he said.
Ma, who became China’s richest person in August, said being the wealthiest in the world’s second-largest economy “is a great pain” in a CNBC interview aired on Nov. 11.
“I never thought I’d be and I don’t want to be,” he said.
The fortune of Hong Kong’s Li, who controls one of the world’s three biggest property developers, has fallen $1.9 billion this year, according to the Bloomberg ranking.
— Bloomberg News