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Business

Meet the eccentric founder of Alibaba

By
Kaja Whitehouse
Published May 7, 2014, 12:50 p.m. ET

He’s ready to fight for your money.

Meet Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, the Chinese Internet giant that’s gearing up to raise billions from American investors in what’s anticipated to be the biggest initial public offering in history.

Ma has been described as an eccentric and a “scrappy fighter” who practices kung fu and other Chinese martial arts. Last year, he opened a tai chi school with Jet Li, the Hong Kong star who starred in “Hero” and other martial arts classics.

Ma celebrates the listing of his company at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2007.AP

The 49-year-old billionaire is expected to bring his fighting skills to the US, where he hopes to raise billions to fund Alibaba’s already rocket-fueled growth.

The exact amount he will raise is not yet known, but Alibaba on Tuesday filed to register its shares with the Securities and Exchange Commission ahead of a “road show” to pitch its shares to investors.

With Alibaba estimated to be worth as much as $245 billion, its share sale is expected to top Visa’s $19 billion offering in 2008 and Facebook’s $16 billion IPO in 2012.

That assumes US investors don’t get too jittery about investing in another Chinese company following a string of accounting scandals that have saddled US investors with massive losses.

As The Post exclusively reported last year, Westchester wine importer Peter Deutsch fought for a court-ordered raid on US-based officers of China’s ZST Digital Networks in an attempt to recover $32.3 million.

“Investing in any Chinese-based company, even ones listed on American exchanges, poses additional risks,” said securities lawyer Andrew Stoltmann.

People walk past the entrance of the Alibaba headquarters in Hangzhou, China.Getty Images

That includes Alibaba. Stoltmann said the “ownership structure of the company likely will give shareholders very little say in the management.”

Ironically, Ma indicated that he is fretting the trap doors that lie within the US capital markets, and not the other way around.

In a letter to employees on Tuesday, Ma warned of “unparalleled ruthlessness … lying behind the massive allure of the capital market.”

To combat it, he reminded his employees’ to stick to the company’s principle of “customer first, employee second, shareholder third.”