According to a new statement on the website of Ant Group, billionaire co-founder of the ecommerce giant Alibaba has given up his controlling rights in Ant Group.
The Alibaba-affiliated company added is will now undergo an “adjustment of the upper-tier shareholding structure,” whereby the ten largest shareholders, including Ma, will henceforth vote independently, and no longer organize and coordinate their votes.
Ma currently controls 53.46% of the voting rights of Ant Group shares through Hangzhou Yunbo, an investment vehicle used by Ma which controls two other entities. Going forward now, Ma will no longer effectively control the company, as he will only control 6.2% of the company’s voting rights, according to Bloomberg calculations.
According to the company’s statement, this change will make the company’s shareholding structure more transparent and diversified, “which will facilitate the steady development of the company.”
The news comes after Beijing has spent several years cracking down on Alibaba and Ant Group, as part of a broader reining in of the Chinese tech sector that has affected a host of other Chinese tech giants, with the government using allegations of violations of anti-monopoly laws to bring the companies to heel.
The move marks one more event driving a wedge between Mr. Ma and the business empire he has helped to form. Shortly after criticizing Beijing’s actions against the Chinese tech sector, the billionaire business magnate became much less public, and disappeared from the public stage.
Over the past two years, Alibaba and Ant Group subsequently were slapped with penalties from Chinese regulators, including a record $2.8 billion fine levied against Alibaba for anti-trust abuses.
Then Ant Group, the owner of the digital payment platform Alipay, in November of 2020 saw Beijing cancel its $37 billion initial public offering (IPO), forcing the company to reorganize its operations.
Since then, Beijing regulators have been attempting to force a separation between Ant-Group, and Alibaba and Ma. Reportedly the regulators plan to turn Ant Group into a financial holding company which will be controlled by China’s central bank.
