By adding strict restrictions on the Ant group, China is restricting Jack Ma from exiting the Ant Group. The company has been busy exploring ways for him to divest his stake in the financial giant and give up control, according to a source familiar to regulators’ thinking.
As per The Wall Street Journal, Ma in a meeting in November has offered to hand over parts of Ant to the Chinese government.
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According to a source, People’s Bank of China, officials from the Central Bank, and financial regulator China Banking and Insurance Regularity Commission held talks with both Ant and Ma, separately between January and March, where they discussed the possibility of tycoon’s exit from the company.
As per the sources, the Ant group hoped that Ma’s stake which is worth billions of dollars can be sold to any existing investor or its e-commerce affiliate Alibaba Group.
“Divestment of Jack Ma’s stake has never been subject with anyone,” says Ant spokesperson in a statement.
Other sources say that Ma was not told that he won’t be allowed to sell his stake to a company close to him, and would instead have to exit completely. As such we cannot clearly determine if the company is taking the divestment option into consideration and if so, which one.
All three sources have some deep connection to this case. One source has been in direct knowledge of Ant’s discussion about the option. Among the other two, one has the knowledge of Ant’s meeting with its officials and the other have access to the conversation between Ma and the regulators, as reported by Reuters.
As for the information by the sources, they all have been consistent of Jack Ma meeting with the regulators before the Chinese New-year, which is in February. The ant started discussing options of Ma’s exit a couple of months ago and Ant saying that they are working on options was sometime in mid-March.
Ma’s exit could be proved beneficial to the company as it can resume its plan of raising $37billion by going public but it was aborted after Ma’s speech in October last year, wherein he criticized the regulators.