Riches beyond wildest dreams for Alibaba’s Ma

The good news for Jack Ma, the head of the e-commerce giant Alibaba, just keeps on coming. Having just overseen the world’s biggest IPO, he has now become China’s richest person with a net worth of $25 billion (€19.5 billion), according to a new survey by the Hurun group.

The 2014 Hurun Rich List, which has been published for the past 16 years, has a record 354 dollar billionaires in China, which marks a rise of 13 per cent from last year.

Not bad, considering this was a year in which anti-graft officers kept a tight leash on extravagance. And 10 years ago, there were just three billionaires.

“It has been an amazing year for China’s best tycoons despite the jitters about the Chinese economy,” Hurun said in its report.

The debut of Alibaba on the New York Stock Exchange earned Ma €14 billion earlier this month, with stock rising 38 per cent on its debut. The company’s IPO places a market value of €166.58 billion on Alibaba – more than Facebook, Intel and Amazon.

The IPO also boosted the fortunes of Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son, who owns a large stake in Alibaba, making him the richest man in Japan.

Behind Jack Ma in second place was Wanda Group chairman Wang Jianlin, who has $24.2 billion (€18.84 billion), and Li Jejun of Hanergy, a renewable energy company, with $20.8 billion (€16.2 billion).

The list has long been dominated by real estate tycoons, but internet billionaires make up five of China’s 10 richest people this year.

The total wealth of the more than 300 members on the rich list adds up to €1.1 trillion, or about 15 per cent of China’s total economy.

Other big tech players in the top 10 are Robin Li, the co-founder of search engine giant Baidu, and the founder of online retailer JD.com, Richard Liu Qiangdong.

The list also includes the head of Tencent, Pony Ma, which operates the vastly successful WeChat and QQ internet services.

Ma has had a truly remarkable rise to become China’s richest man. He began as an English teacher, after gaining a degree from Hangzhou Teachers’ Institute in 1988, but it wasn’t long until he was working his way up what was then the newly-designed Chinese corporate ladder.

He managed to balance the challenges of the private sector and the demands of the Communist Party keen to keep oversight and control of the emerging world of the internet.

Ma founded China Pages in 1995, which is generally agreed to be China’s first internet company. Rather than rushing ahead, Ma played it strategically and headed up the information department of the China International Electronic Commerce Centre , part of the powerful Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Co-operation. It was only in early 1999 that he left the ministry to launch Alibaba.com, his connections in government secure.

Alibaba was created during what were still dark days in the Chinese IT world, when he was forced to tinker with an unfeasibly slow internet connection that took nearly four hours to download a page.

More recently, Ma has focused on developing tai chi and kung fu skills in China with martial arts star Jet Li, but he remains one of China’s most powerful people and has strong links to the ruling Communist Party, especially the premier, Li Keqiang.

However, the report pointed out that the economy was cooling and the situation for billionaires was less conducive than it had been, given the government’s crackdown on corruption.

Also the government has unveiled measures meant to cool the housing market, which has seen growth stall for several quarters.

Reflecting this shift in the economic focus, four of the six property tycoons in last year’s top 10 list have dropped down the rankings.