We know Jack Ma primarily as the co-founder as well as the former executive chairman of Alibaba group. Currently, he is the talk of the fintech town because he is set to become the 11th richest person in the world, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. All thanks to the Alibaba affiliate company- ANT Group’s IPO (Initial Public Offering). Jack Ma is making history again.
This record breaking IPO has surpassed Saudi Aramco, the company which was in first position in terms of IPO amount. This turnabout indicates that Jack Ma is set to raise more than $34.5 billion, exceeding Aramco’s $29 billion share sale from 2019.
Jack Ma and the ANT Group Co.
Many Chinese people associate Jack Ma and his ventures of the last 10 years as a rise of Chinese prosperity. Alipay was the former name of the ANT Group Co. which started as a payments side-hustle business, created by the one and only Jack Ma. It was an attempt to provide a solution for transactional hurdles businesses and customers used to face.
ANT changed the landscape of all that. The founder of Kapronasia, Zennon Kapron has stated, “[Ma’s] vision from the very beginning was to enable people to essentially do better and give them the tools to do that”
ANT allows people to receive small loans quicker than the previous inefficient state-run banking, it enabled them to pay easily with a few taps and invest with as less as 1 Yuan (15 cents in USD) in larger money market funds with their hard earned money.
General partner of Race Capital and Chinese internet expert, Edith Yeung, has commented,
“Somebody like him, with all the wrong formula [for success] can get to this point, it’s just amazing and astonishing.” She added, “Chinese people look up to him because he looks just like us and he [achieved] mega success, Silicon Valley-style.”
How ANT Group IPO Broke the Record
The ANT Group stock sale had been one of the most highly anticipated IPO announcements in many years. ANT Group Co. pushed to become the solution in the Chinese region as a powerhouse of online payments and the answer to another tech giant-Amazon.
NASDAQ or NYSE would have been the primary place for the stock sale to be released under normal circumstances. But, after the “trade war” between US and Chinese markets escalated, ANT Group IPO has been set to be a candidate for the Hong Kong Stock Exchange along with Shanghai.
Impact of the Record Breaking ANT IPO
Jack Ma has 8.8% stake in the ANT Group Co. Post-IPO which will be worth greater than $27 billion, catapults Ma’s status as a tech tycoon above many elite businesses. He is soon to surpass owners of LRLCY (L’Oreal), ORCL (Oracle) as well as the members of the Walton family, who own WMT (Walmart).
This shall be the 2nd time Ma will be shunning a world record of Initial Public Offering (IPO). In 2014, Alibaba IPO raised a mind blowing $25 billion in NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) which was the biggest IPO in history, back then. Saudi Aramco’s float of $29.4 billion surpassed that only last year.
In 2014, Hong Kong Stock Exchange refused to list Alibaba with dual-class shares, this time around, Hong Kong and Shanghai are not missing out on the opportunity. Ma is calling this record breaking IPO “a miracle”. He said,
“We didn’t dare to think about it five years ago, or even three years ago.”
Ma has already been declared as the richest man in the Chinese region, by the Hurun China Rich List which was published only last week, and BBI (Bloomberg Billionaires Index)
Jack Ma will soon have gathered a stunning $71.1 billion of fortune, estimated by Bloomberg. The author of “Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built”, Duncan Clark, has mentioned the fact that Ma is seemingly a correspondent to Henry Ford, the American industrialist and business mogul.
He stated furthermore,
“In terms of Henry Ford’s standardized production, you can think about that in terms of the logistics of the Alibaba Empire, and retail, and now with ANT’s [impact on China’s] finance. Those are the three big sectors right there that he’s linked in new ways and revolutionized.”
This has been the second time Jack Ma has stunned the business world and transformed the narrative of what it means to be a tech and business magnate in the 21st century.
Not only is he a brilliant example of a successful business entrepreneur, he is also a philanthropist. $611 million of his ANT shares are to be donated to charities, he has pledged so.