Chinese tycoon Jack Ma lays low

The Chinese billionaire and château owner Jack Ma has not been seen since October and is thought to be laying low following his public criticism of China’s national financial regulators.

In October last year Ma delivered a speech at a summit in Shanghai criticising government policies and state run banks, which apparently infuriated president Xi Jinping.

National regulators, the very body Ma had condemned, then called Ma and other executives at his new fintech venture, Ant Group, in for questioning.

They halted the share offering for Ant Group that was due to take place (and forecast to be the world’s biggest IPO) and announced investigations into his former business Alibaba – as well as main competitor TenCent.

In December the regulators announced that Ant Group’s corporate governance was “not sound” and ordered it to scale back its activities.

Ma was also supposedly told not to leave the country. The tycoon, meanwhile, has not been seen publicly since 31 December and did not appear as a judge in the final of a gameshow he was involved with, ‘Africa’s Business Heroes’.

Most commentators have said that Ma has likely hidden himself away. One told Vice, “you don’t want to be in the public eye when your company is in a very complicated political situation”.

Nonetheless, much like China’s recent approach to Australia, this has been widely seen as Beijing taking a public figure down a peg or two for supposed transgressions.

An editorial in the state run People’s Daily made it clear: “There is no so-called era of Ma Yun, only Ma Yun as part of an era.”

Ma shot to fame and fortune as the co-founder of technology group Alibaba. Part of the group’s operations was the online retail platform Tmall.

As China’s e-commerce sector boomed, Tmall became a key route to market for numerous drinks companies and it also became the main stakeholder in another online drinks specialist, 1919.cn.

Ma himself has also become more closely involved with the drinks industry, opening two bars in Shanghai and acquiring Château de Sours in Bordeaux’s Entre-Deux-Mers.