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Jack Ma is backing down and will no longer have control over Ant Group. The company said that the decision comes after its shareholders agreed to overhaul its shareholding system or organization.
According to CNN Business, based on the company’s statement and its own estimation, after the modification, the 58-year-old Chinese business magnate’s voting rights will drop to just 6.2%. It was noted that prior to the restructuring, Ma had more than 50% of voting rights at Ant Group through Hangzhou Yunbo and two other groups.
To put it simply, the billionaire and founder of the Ant Group will lose majority voting rights in the company as he chose to give this up. The financial services corporation added that the adjustments on the voting rights would make its shareholder structure more transparent and diversified.
But then again, Ant Group clarified that despite the modification, there would be no change regarding the economic interests of any shareholders. Based on the report, 10 major shareholders, including Ma, agreed to stop acting together when exercising their voting rights. This means they will only be voting independently rather than cooperating with each other.
The changes in governance structure were recently announced by Ant Group, and it came after Chinese regulators stopped Ant Group’s $37 billion IPO attempt in November 2020. The authorities proceeded to order the company to reorganize its business.
BBC News reported that Ant Group is close to completing the two-year restructuring ordered by the regulators. Local authorities are reportedly set to impose more than a $1 billion fine on the company.
"Jack Ma's departure from Ant Financial, a company he founded, shows the determination of the Chinese leadership to reduce the influence of large private investors," Orient Capital Research’s managing director, Andrew Collier, commented. "This trend will continue the erosion of the most productive parts of the Chinese economy."
Photo by: World Economic Forum/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
