Jack Ma | CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon

13/10/2016

China tops US in numbers of billionaires – BBC News

Property magnate Wang Jianlin of Dalian Wanda tops the list of 594 billionaires in the country, ahead of 535 billionaires in the US.

Alibaba‘s Jack Ma was second, with his wealth having risen 41% from last year.

The annual list is compiled by Shanghai publishers Hurun and often compared to the Forbes list in the US.The Hurun Report’s rich list is one of the most closely-watched and accurate assessments of wealth in China. The annual report has been published for the past 18 years.

Earlier this year, the publisher released a separate, global list, showing that the number of billionaires in China outnumbered those in the US for the first time.

However, none of China’s super-rich make it into the global top 20.

Global reach

At the top of the China rich list is Wang Jianlin, who sits on a personal fortune of $32.1bn (£26.4bn).

His company Dalian Wanda has made headlines throughout the year with a number of high profile forays into the US movie markets. It has taken over Legendary Pictures, as well as stepping into US and UK cinema chains and striking an alliance with Sony Pictures.

Alibaba’s Jack Ma is a close second with $30.6bn, and Pony Ma of internet and online gaming giant Tencent comes third with $24.6bn.

Image copyright REUTERS

The biggest increase came from Yao Zhengua of investment and real estate firm Baoneng Group, whose wealth jumped by 820% to $17.2bn, putting him in fourth position.

Hurun chairman Rupert Hoogewerf said Mr Yao’s rise illustrated a shift in China’s maturing economy.

“Yao’s financial investment model represents the new wave of wealth creation in China,” he explained. “The first money made in China 20 years ago came from trading, followed by manufacturing, real estate, IT, and today it is about using the capital markets for financial investments.

“Robin Li and Melissa Ma of search engine Baidu have a fortune of $14.7bn, ranked eighth while founder of smartphone makers Xiaomi, Lei Jun, dropped out of the top 10 to number 14 as competition in China’s smartphone market intensified.

Most of China’s billionaires live in Beijing, followed by Shenzhen, Shanghai and Hangzhou.

Globally, the Forbes rich list is topped by Microsoft founder Bill Gates with $75bn, followed by Amancio Ortega of Zara and legendary investor Warren Buffett.

Source: China tops US in numbers of billionaires – BBC News

Posted in billionaires, China alert, Economics | 1 Comment »

Tags: AMC Theatres, Beijing, China, Jack Ma, Javier Tebas, La Liga, UEFA, Wanda Group, Wang Jianlin

14/02/2015

Jack Ma Tells Alibaba Staffers: No Red Packets This Year – China Real Time Report – WSJ

Instead of handing out envelopes of cash to Alibaba’s employees this Lunar New Year, Jack Ma is distributing a huge reality check.

Chinese companies typically hand out red envelopes – known as hongbao – stuffed with money to employees on the eve of the big Lunar New Year holiday, which begins Wednesday. Alibaba Group would seem to be good for a similar reward, given its $25 billion initial public offering bonanza in September.

But in a post on his personal microblog site Friday, Mr. Ma said such rewards are reserved only for exceptional results.

“The reason for not distributing red envelopes is that in the past year, Alibaba Group has not had exceptional results and not had any special surprises,” said Mr. Ma, the company’s founder and executive chairman. “The success of becoming listed should not be a surprise as it was the result of all of Alibaba’s employees’ work over 15 years. But aside from going public, objectively speaking, we haven’t been that satisfied with our results in 2014 that we should distribute red envelopes.

“We must objectively and calmly see our own results, rationally regard external views and not let ourselves be lost in illusory fame,” he said.

Ouch.

via Jack Ma Tells Alibaba Staffers: No Red Packets This Year – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

Posted in China alert, eCommerce, Economics | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Alibaba, Alibaba Group, Chairman, China, Chinese language, Counterfeit consumer goods, Hong Kong, Initial public offering, Jack Ma, Ma, red envelopes, Wang Jianlin

05/02/2015

Alibaba’s Ant Financial to buy 25 percent of India’s One97 | Reuters

Ant Financial Services Group, an affiliate of China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA.N), has agreed to buy 25 percent of Indian payment services provider One97 Communications, tapping into the country’s smartphone and online industry boom.



Embed from Getty Images

The companies did not provide the value of the deal, but a person with knowledge of the matter called the investment a precursor to One97 listing on the stock exchange, and said the stake was worth more than $500 million.

The deal values One97 at more than $2 billion, making it one of the most-valuable start ups in the country. One97 runs Paytm, an online platform through which users can shop or pay utility bills, whereas Ant runs Paytm’s Chinese peer Alipay.

Alibaba spokeswoman Teresa Li and One97 founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma declined to disclose the value. Sharma told Reuters that Ant would buy new shares in his company.

Paytm has benefited from the spread of affordable handsets and internet connectivity which has turned India into the fastest-growing smartphone market in the Asia-Pacific region, according to researcher IDC.

via Alibaba’s Ant Financial to buy 25 percent of India’s One97 | Reuters.

Posted in China alert, Chindia Alert, Economics, India alert | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Alibaba, Alibaba Group, Ant Financial, Ant Financial Services Group, China, China's Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Chinese language, India, Initial public offering, Jack Ma, Marissa Mayer, One97 Communications, Reuters, Taobao, Yahoo

19/12/2014

Chinese Banks Lure Deposits by Offering Goodies for Cash – Businessweek

Banks in the U.S. once gave away toasters and irons to lure depositors. Banks in China are upping the ante. With customers pulling out money and putting it into higher-yielding investments, they are offering Mercedes, iPhones, and daily deliveries of vegetables to sidestep interest rate caps and get people to stash some yuan in savings accounts.

Chinese Banks Offer Goodies for Cash

“Chinese banks are hemorrhaging their deposits,” says Rainy Yuan, an analyst at brokerage Masterlink Securities in Shanghai. China’s banks lost 950 billion yuan ($154 billion) of deposits in the three months through September, the first quarterly drop since 1999. In the first 11 months of the year, new deposits were 23 percent lower than in the same period last year, People’s Bank of China data show. Offering incentives to attract money is not the solution, Yuan says: “There is no fix for this. All the efforts they made to win savers back will only push up the costs, so it’s a losing battle to fight.”

Decline in new deposits in the first 11 months of 2014 vs. the same period last year

Savers seeking higher returns have been pouring money into online money-market funds offered by the e-commerce companies Alibaba Group (BABA) and Baidu (BIDU). One fund, Yu’E Bao, started last year by Alibaba affiliate Alipay, drew 535 billion yuan in its first 15 months of existence from 149 million customers, more than the populations of France and the U.K. combined. Users simply tapped a few buttons on their mobile phones to secure an annual rate of return that climbed as high as 6.8 percent before falling to about 4 percent recently.

Savers can also earn more on their money by moving to high-yield products, the fastest-growing part of the so-called shadow banking system. Households put 12.9 trillion yuan into high-yield trust products as of Sept. 30. Trust companies pool investor capital to put money in real estate and construction projects, or make corporate loans, and promise returns of more than 10 percent. Trust companies have seen assets under management rise more than tenfold since the start of 2009.

The Shanghai Composite Index’s 45 percent surge over the past six months has led people to shift money from banks to stocks. In the first week of December, Chinese investors opened almost 600,000 stock trading accounts, a 62 percent increase over the previous week, according to China Securities Depository & Clearing.

To stimulate the economy, China’s central bank on Nov. 21 announced a cut in benchmark interest rates for the first time in more than two years. That was offset by the central bank’s decision to raise the maximum interest rate banks can pay customers to 20 percent over the benchmark from 10 percent above it. Ping An Bank (000001:CH), China Citic Bank (601998:CH), and Bank of Ningbo (002142:CH) immediately alerted customers through text messages that they would offer the highest rate allowed.

via Chinese Banks Lure Deposits by Offering Goodies for Cash – Businessweek.

Posted in Banking, China alert, Economics | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Alibaba, Alibaba Group, Alipay, Apple Inc., Baidu, China, China Citic Bank, Chinese banks, Chinese language, Interest rate, Jack Ma, Mobile device, Mobile payment, Rainy Yuan

07/11/2014

Alibaba Looks Ahead to ‘Singles Day’ – Businessweek

So far, Alibaba (BABA) is doing a good job living up to the hype that surrounded its record-setting initial public offering. The Chinese e-commerce company yesterday, Nov. 4, reported its first earnings numbers since its IPO raised a record $25 billion in September, and Alibaba’s sales for the quarter increased 54 percent, to 16.8 billion yuan. Although higher costs for integration of newly acquired businesses and other marketing expenses helped drive its earnings down 39 percent, to 3 billion yuan, that result was still better than many analysts had expected.

Merchandise is prepared for Singles' Day online sales on Nov. 5, 2014 in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, China

“The China retail business is proving to be a powerhouse,” wrote Rob Sanderson, managing director with MKM Partners, in a report published Nov. 4. China’s market, he added, offers “impressive growth even at a very large scale.”

via Alibaba Looks Ahead to ‘Singles Day’ – Businessweek.

Posted in China alert, eCommerce, Economics | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Alibaba, Alibaba Group, AliExpress Coupon, American depositary receipt, China, depreciation and amortization, earnings, Earnings before interest, Initial public offering, Jack Ma, Maggie Wu, Taobao, taxes

11/09/2014

Can Jack Ma’s Alibaba Fortune Jump-Start Chinese Philanthropy? – Businessweek

Harvard just announced its largest-ever donation: a $350 million unrestricted gift to its School of Public Health. The donor is Hong Kong-based Morningside Foundation, led by two brothers who earned their fortunes in real estate, private equity, and venture capital. One brother, Gerald Chan, earned a graduate degree from Harvard. The school will be renamed in honor of their late father as the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Greater China is home to 358 billionaires (including 64 Hong Kong billionaires), according to the 2014 Hurun Global Rich List. Yet with a few exceptions—including the Harvard gift and Chinese tech titans’ recent fondness for the ice bucket challenge—a culture of domestic philanthropy has been relatively slow to take root. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet hosted a lavish 2010 dinner in Beijing intended to encourage the Chinese elite to embrace philanthropy, but several tycoons snubbed the Americans’ invitations and declined to open their wallets.

Now, at last, China has a powerful homegrown evangelist for philanthropy: Jack Ma. As co-founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group, which filed paperwork last week to raise as much as $21.2 billion in an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, he is one of China’s most respected and closely watched tycoons—and he’s publicly embracing a culture of giving.

Ma joined Alibaba co-founder Joe Tsai earlier this year in establishing a personal philanthropic trust to be “funded by share options granted by Alibaba … for approximately two percent (2%) of Alibaba’s equity,” according to a statement. The trust will focus on the “environment, medicine, education, and culture.” In Ma’s words, “Alibaba was founded 15 years ago with a mission ‘to make it easy to do business anywhere’ and a set of principles and values that emphasize our responsibility to society. Giving back to society is deeply embedded in Alibaba’s culture.”

The total value of the fund will depend on the performance of Alibaba’s upcoming IPO. If the company is valued at $120 billion, or more, the charitable trust will be worth at least $2.4 billion.

via Can Jack Ma’s Alibaba Fortune Jump-Start Chinese Philanthropy? – Businessweek.

Posted in China alert, Economics, entrepreneurship, philantropy | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Alibaba, Alibaba Group, Bill Gates, China, Gerald Chan, Harvard, Hong Kong, Initial public offering, Jack Ma, Joe Tsai, Morningside Foundation, New York Stock Exchange, philanthropy, School of Public Health

22/05/2014

Serving the People: Chinese Law Student Opens Noodle Shop, Kicks Off Debate – China Real Time Report – WSJ

A Peking University law student who was worried about finding a job and set up a noodle shop last month has become a social media sensation.

Zhang Tianyi has won online praise for his entrepreneurial spirit – though the 24-year-old has attracted heaps of criticism that he is wasting his skills. But his effort has struck a chord with many college graduates who are also finding it hard to land a job.

This week he got an official pat on the back from a senior government official who hailed Mr. Zhang, likening him to hugely successful entrepreneurs like Jack Ma, who founded Alibaba and turned it into an e-commerce powerhouse.

“I’d like to try those noodles,” said Xin Changxing, vice minister of human resources and social security, speaking at a news briefing. “He’s innovating and looking for a market niche.”

Philanthropy: China’s Carnegie | The Economist

“THE problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth,” wrote Andrew Carnegie in 1889. More than a century later, the citizens of supposedly Communist China could hardly disagree. Carnegie, one of the wealthiest men of America’s Gilded Age, soon set about giving his money away, and on April 24th Jack Ma, one of the wealthiest men of China’s Gilded Age, suggested he would start to do the same. Mr Ma and Joseph Tsai, co-founders of Alibaba, an online marketplace, announced the creation of philanthropic trusts that could be worth as much as $3 billion. “Somebody has to do something,” says Mr Ma of China’s environmental and health-care problems. “Our job is to wake people up.”

It is easy to be cynical about this. The gift is a move taken straight out of a Silicon Valley public-relations playbook, ahead of Alibaba’s expected initial public offering this year, which could value the company at $150 billion. But it could still have a remarkable effect not just on China’s fast-expanding class of super-rich, but also on its government.

China’s wealthy are a notoriously stingy lot. When two of America’s best-known philanthropists, Bill Gates, who has advised Mr Ma, and Warren Buffett, visited the country in 2010, a meeting they held was notable for the number of Chinese tycoons who stayed away. Of 122 billionaires around the world who have signed the Giving Pledge promoted by Messrs Buffett and Gates, promising to give away half their wealth by the end of their lives, not a single one is Chinese, even though China now has 358 billionaires, one-fifth of the global total.

The main reason for this is fear: many have made their money in the shadows of a supposedly socialist country, so few of China’s rich are keen to identify themselves publicly. China’s princelings, related to the leadership, are often the least enthusiastic of all, especially when the regime of Xi Jinping, China’s president, is condemning corruption, albeit selectively. Having made his money more publicly, Mr Ma may be an exception, but his foundation still adds pressure on other Chinese tycoons. Mr Xi should help, by publicly applauding Mr Ma and by making all donations tax-deductible.

It is also a prompt for Mr Xi to promote civil society. With its countryside teeming with poor children needing education and old people needing health care, the regime has decided to give non-governmental organisations (NGOs) more freedom to operate, under party scrutiny. Mr Xi needs to let them play a larger, more independent role. This highlights the party’s central dilemma: it is scared of allowing independent groups of citizens to flourish and help solve problems, and yet that is exactly what China needs. As long as civil society is kept weak, China’s social problems will get worse. Passing a new charity law, stalled for years, to clarify charities’ legal status would be a useful step in the right direction.

The question for Mr Ma is how far he is prepared to nudge the regime in this direction. His public stance is, sensibly, that he wants to work with the government, not confront it. But the areas he is likely to focus on—education, health care and the environment—matter enormously, and technology can spur political change. Mr Ma recently launched kits for smartphone users to crowdsource data on poor water quality across China, a sly dose of insurrection. Carnegie became famous not just for the money he gave away and the example he set to other philanthropists, but for the way he prompted the American government to embrace education, civic programmes and social reform. Mr Ma’s money and example can do the same for China, if only the Communist Party will allow it.

via Philanthropy: China’s Carnegie | The Economist.

Giving in

Posted in China alert, Economics, philantropy, Social & cultural | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Alibaba, Andrew Carnegie, Bill Gates, China, Communist Party, Giving Pledge, Jack Ma, Xi JinPing

19/02/2014

The Secret of China’s Taobao’s Success – Businessweek

Amazon has earned the moniker “the everything store” in the U.S., but in China Alibaba’s e-commerce sites, especially Taobao.com, dominate, with Amazon (AMZN) almost nowhere to be seen.

Image representing Taobao as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBase

Taobao really is the everything store: The Alibaba-owned retail platform sells everything from sunglasses to cadavers (for $21,000, to people claiming to be medical students). A friend in Beijing recently purchased the dress she would wear to her sister’s wedding from Taobao because “there are many more choices” than she could imagine finding in any shopping mall or bridal shop.

While Jack Ma’s e-commerce empire has triumphed in China for many reasons, including guanxi, business foresight, and good technology, its dominance was hardly assured.

In 2004, Amazon purchased the Chinese online bookseller and retailer Joyo.com for $74 million. The site failed to live up to its high hopes, and today Amazon commands less than 3 percent of China’s e-tail market. Similarly, EBay (EBAY)acquired once-popular Chinese e-commerce site EachNet, but market share quickly dwindled as Alibaba’s sites boomed. Even as U.S. technology companies flounder in China, McKinsey Global Institute predicts that China’s total e-commerce market could be worth $650 billion by 2020.

One of the secrets of Taobao’s success is its adeptness at understanding the quirks of “how Chinese shoppers want to transact,” says Barney Tan, a senior lecturer in business at the University of Sydney, who focuses on China’s e-commerce. “Taobao has catered to Chinese preferences for doing business—for example, it’s enabled buyers and sellers to negotiate and bargain on prices.”

Given common (often warranted) fears about being cheated online, Taobao has also “incorporated an optional escrow service to allow shoppers to pay for goods only after they’ve received and inspected them.” Its Alipay system, which somewhat resembles PayPal, can debit a Chinese bank account, so no financial card is required for online shopping sprees.

As Tan sums up a common sentiment in China, “If you want to sell something in China, you sell it on Taobao.” Not only wealthy urbanites seem to agree: Already more than 2 million Taobao stores are registered to rural IP addresses in China—a gain of 25 percent in just one year. China’s shoppers and entrepreneurs alike are turning to the ubiquitous platform.

via The Secret of Taobao’s Success – Businessweek.

Posted in China alert, eCommerce, Economics | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Alibaba, Amazon, China, China Alibaba, EBAY, Jack Ma, PayPal, Taobao, University of Sydney

11/01/2014

China parents count cost of sending children to overseas universities – FT.com

Jack Ma, one of China’s best-known entrepreneurs, thinks business success in China has nothing to do with prestigious foreign degrees: “When you want to judge whether a person . . . is excellent or not don’t look at whether they went to Harvard or Stanford,” he is famous for saying.

More and more Chinese parents apparently disagree with the co-founder of internet company Alibaba: they are increasingly spending three or four years’ annual family income to send their only child for foreign study. Some are now asking whether it is worth the investment.

The number of Chinese studying overseas has more than tripled in the past decade and continues to shoot up. The rise has been particularly dramatic among lower-middle-class families: according to a report from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, up to the end of 2009 students from such families made up only 2 per cent of all those who studied overseas, but by the end of 2010 the proportion had risen to 34 per cent.

For many Chinese families with children overseas, money is no object. But many lower middle-class and working-class families are counting on their only child to support them in their old age.

Foreign universities also increasingly rely on fees from Chinese students to boost their income. But is it worth spending Rmb1m-2m ($165,000-$330,00) on preparing for and completing an overseas degree, only to return to a job market where seven million graduates cannot find jobs?

According to Chinese recruitment agencies and human resources professionals, people who have studied overseas – known as “haigui”, or sea turtles, because they have one foot on land and one in the sea – command little if any salary premium when they start entry-level jobs back in China.

via China parents count cost of sending children to overseas universities – FT.com.

Posted in Affluence, China alert, Economics, education, overseas university, Social & cultural | 1 Comment »

Tags: Alibaba, Asia, China, Chinese, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Chinese students, Jack Ma, Overseas Chinese, United States

CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon

Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon

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China tops US in numbers of billionaires – BBC News

Jack Ma Tells Alibaba Staffers: No Red Packets This Year – China Real Time Report – WSJ

Alibaba’s Ant Financial to buy 25 percent of India’s One97 | Reuters

Chinese Banks Lure Deposits by Offering Goodies for Cash – Businessweek

Alibaba Looks Ahead to ‘Singles Day’ – Businessweek

Serving the People: Chinese Law Student Opens Noodle Shop, Kicks Off Debate – China Real Time Report – WSJ

The Secret of China’s Taobao’s Success – Businessweek

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