Ant Group

Jack Ma — founder profiled in the Chinese Founder Ledger — is documented as follows: alibaba co-founder whose Ant Group affiliate was preparing what would have been the world's largest IPO (targeting roughly $34.5 billion) in Shanghai and Hong Kong in November 2020, when Chinese exchanges suspended the listing days after Ma publicly criticized financial regulators. The profile is grounded in the 2 sources indexed for this founder.

On June 22, 2026, Ant Group disclosed that He had been named an independent director of its board as part of a broader reshuffle that also added Tsinghua School of Economics and Management dean Bai Chongen and former Deloitte China CEO Tsang Shun-fu; existing directors Laura Cha and AI scholar Zhang Hongjiang retained their seats.

Jack Ma's Alibaba in 2024 November, Ant Group or its subsidiaries have been to be planning for potential IPO in 2025. In January 2024, Ant Group .

Jack Ma's Alibaba planned to raise US$34.5 billion in what would have been one of the largest IPO in history, valuing the company at US$313 billion.

Jack Ma's Alibaba the decision to postpone the listing is also linked to the recent rhetoric from Jack Ma .

Jack Ma's Alibaba iPO: The suspension, seen as a measure to rein in Jack Ma, was done after a meeting between the regulators and the company's top executives. Private .

In a late-October 2020 address, Jack Ma characterized the incumbent financial-system architecture as an inheritance from the industrial era, positioning Ant Group's technology against what he framed as outdated regulatory scaffolding — remarks widely reported as a proximate context for the subsequent IPO suspension.

Reuters reported that the State Council's general office prepared a report on public reaction to Ma's speech that was shared with senior leaders including President Xi Jinping, and that the reaction findings were largely negative, prompting officials to call for a comprehensive investigation into Ant's business practices;.

Ma delivered public remarks critical of Chinese financial regulation and banking practices at a Shanghai summit on October 24, 2020, shortly before Ant Group's planned IPO.

New draft rules for online micro-lending were issued by the Chinese central bank and other regulators around the same period, which CNBC reported could directly affect Ant Group's business model; Reuters separately reported, based on anonymous sources, that senior officials including Vice Premier Liu He directed regulators to review Ant's operations following Ma's remarks.