Alibaba Group Founder Jack Ma is Spotted in Hong Kong

Billionaire Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba Group, has reappeared in Hong Kong after largely laying out of public eye for the past year.

to two sources who spoke to Reuters, Ma is currently in Hong Kong and has met business associates recently.

Since a regulatory clampdown started on Alibaba last year, Ma has spent most of his time keeping a low profile. He had delivered a speech in October of 2020 in Shanghai criticizing China’s financial regulators. The speech triggered a chain of events that resulted in the shelving of his Ant Group’s mega IPO.

He appeared in January speaking to a group of teachers by video after many had wondered of his absence. Then in May he had visited Alibaba’s Hangzhou campus during the firm’s annual “Ali Day” according to company sources.

On Sept. 1, photographs of Ma visiting several agricultural greenhouses in the eastern Zhejiang province.

The next day, Alibaba said it would invest 100 billion yuan ($15.5 billion) by 2025 in support of “common prosperity.”

The sources, who declined to be identified due to confidentiality constraints, said that Ma had met at least “a few” business associates over meals last week.

Ma is mostly based in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou and has at least one luxury house in the former British colony that also houses some of his companies’ offshore business operations.

Alibaba is listed in Hong Kong and New York.

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.