What it means for Jack Ma to quit
No one expected that Ma Yun would give up Ant Group.
On January 7, Ant released an announcement, media fryer:
The voting rights of Jack Ma and his concerted actors were adjusted from 53.46% to 10 natural persons, including Jack Ma, Ant's executives, and employee representatives, independently exercising their voting rights in shares. With this adjustment, Ma's voting power dropped to 6.208%.
To put it simply: Jack Ma's personal voting rights fell from 53.46% to 6.208%; Jack Ma and other executives completely lost control of Ant Group.
You know, Ma Yun takes control very seriously. He and Yahoo, once the majority shareholder, have had a control dispute. At that time, Yahoo was not willing to be a shareholder, but wanted to gain control of Alibaba, and planned to remove Ma from power.
In order to consolidate control, Ma Yun brought in a lot of money, and finally "drove away" Yahoo, making it a minority shareholder.
As a result, this time, in the ownership of ant control, Teacher Ma, who has been through a lot of battles, actually gave up, which is really incredible.
Maybe it all started two years ago.
In 2020, Ant was stopped on the eve of its launch; Subsequently, the supervision of admission and group rectification.
This has led many people to speculate: this is not that the ant group cannot be listed, but that Ma Yun's ant group cannot be listed.
Just a week before Ma Yun gave up the ants, state-owned running entered the market. Ant's licensed financial institution has just approved a 10.5 billion yuan capital increase plan, and Hangzhou Jintou Digital Technology Group, a local state-owned enterprise in Hangzhou, has become the second largest shareholder with a 10% investment.
Ma Yun stepped down and state-owned assets entered, and the answer may be obvious.
Ant's many applications, including Alipay, Yuebei, Huabei, and Borrowing, are all national-level; Its application of big data, cloud computing, blockchain and other technologies can also be called industry leaders.
Not only at the enterprise level and industry level, but also at the volume, data and user volume of Ant, it can be said that the business of Ant Group is the key to people's livelihood, and it also involves the lifeline of the socialist economy.
Today, when data security and financial security are becoming more and more important, and at a time when preventing the disorderly expansion of capital has become a top-down consensus, ant "nationalization" and "de-Ma Yun" may be the only way.
Jack Ma retreated behind
At the beginning, Ma Yun said: If you need to return Alipay to the state, you must not blink your eyes, so you can give it to the country.
Now it seems that he has already made a predictive judgment on Alipay.
He has made a lot of remarks out of the circle, which has triggered many netizens and denounced capitalists.
Even if I look back from God's perspective now, Ma Yun's words are like the truth, but they always give people a feeling of bottomlessness.
Looking sideways at the peaks on the side of the ridge, we look at things from different angles, and often get different results.
In layman's terms, that is, "the ass determines the head".
Even among acquaintances, there is a saying that "white heads are as new", and it is difficult for us to make accurate judgments about a person based on just a few words circulating on the Internet.
Today, we are not good at evaluating Ma Yun personally, but it can be seen that Ma Yun was still very active in the market in the past, which is very different from the low-key in recent years.
In May 2013, Jack Ma stepped down as CEO of Alibaba; In September 2019, he continued to step down as chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba; In early January 2023, the actual control of Ant and Hang Seng Electronics was officially removed.
We moved our attention from Jack Ma to other big factories, and the main line gradually became clearer.
In January 2021, based on the report, the State Administration for Market Regulation ordered Tencent Holdings Co., Ltd. to acquire the exclusive copyright of China Music Group in July 2016 and imposed penalties.
Soon, the first anti-monopoly case involving the two giants of Tencent and Douyin was officially filed.
On October 18, 2022, the State Administration for Market Regulation concluded the ordinary business operator concentration case, and soon after the news of the joint venture between Tencent and Unicom, came out.
So far, the two domestic Internet giants have been dyed with state-owned assets.
Looking at the other bigwigs, they are also retreating.
Since July 2020, Huang Zheng has gradually separated from Pinduoduo; In November 2020, Ma Huateng stepped down as Tenpay; In May 2021, Zhang Yiming stepped down as CEO of Douyin; In 2022, Ding Lei began to step down from the NetEase department...
These well-known Internet and financial bigwigs seem to have begun to retreat.
However, as we all know, the profits of the Internet and financial industries, which are much higher than most other industries, have now withdrawn, and the reasons behind them have gradually come to light.
Regardless of the original intention of Jack Ma and others, these Internet and financial companies are objectively equivalent to merging other industries into their own umbrella and sucking the blood of the entire industry.
The state's support for the private economy does not mean that it supports the monopolistic behavior of the private economy, and the rectification of ants is the beginning of a big chess step.
Deep circle of friends
According to the division of water and soil, Ma Yun is a typical Zhejiang businessman.
Zhejiang businessmen have a characteristic, never say cruel words, do not say hard words, analyze people's hearts, specialize in picking up good words but not deliberately flattering, not only make the upper and lower left and right brains and gray faces happy to hear it, but will not lose their own identity.
Jack Ma is even more familiar with this set, don't see him loud in public, but in private he is actually very smooth. So his circle of friends is much larger than the average businessman.
Before that, there was a legendary "mysterious organization" in China, the Taishan Society, claiming that 16 people gathered two trillion yuan, saying that Ma Yun could not squeeze into this organization.
Lenovo Liu Chuanzhi, Sitong Duan Yongji, Wantong Feng Lun, Fanhai Lu Zhiqiang, Fosun Guo Guangchang, Giant Shi Yuzhu, Baidu Li Yanhong, Hengdian Group Xu Wenrong, Huayi Brothers Wang Zhongjun... Just by looking at these names, it is already a powerful industrial chain, and you can imagine how terrifying the strength gathered together is.
But Jack Ma's circle of friends will be more terrifying than Mount Tai.
Officials: There should be quite a few high-ranking officials at the provincial and ministerial levels and at the departmental level.
Capital circle: Ali's butler Cai Chongxin is timely and low-key, but there are more big capitals behind the scenes that few people know, and there are many red backgrounds.
Zhejiang Department: Zhejiang talents of all kinds, entrepreneurs, professors, etc., most of the members of Jiangnan Association and Lakeside University are Zhejiang people.
International Department: There are many good friends of Jack Ma in the world, government and enterprises, Buffett, Gates, Clinton.
Entertainment industry: Whether it is Jin Yong, Zhao Wei, Jet Li, Stephen Chow, Wang Zhongjun, Zhang Jizhong are all good friends of Ma Yun Film and Television Entertainment.
Sports circle: Jack Ma not only likes football but also basketball, and Kobe Bryant should also be good friends.
Art circle: Ma always likes to dance and ink, and also paints, and has many artist friends.
Master circle: Masters such as Wang Lin and Li Yi still let Ma Yun remain curious about them.
Master Wang Lin's circle of friends has him, and the female Buffett Zhao Wei has him behind him; Run the Jiangnan Club, create a lakeside university, and guide the world's talents, and you can also talk and laugh with Silicon Valley iron man Musk on the other side of the ocean.
Either you have money, you have power, or you are very talented, whether it is art or pattern vision. And Ma Yun also relied on this circle of friends to extend the tentacles of the Ali empire to various fields: e-commerce, finance, entertainment, short video, logistics, electronics, software information, big health...
Until the accident, relying on the huge power of the "universal circle of friends", no matter how big the storm of capital is, Teacher Ma and Ali still sit firmly on the fishing platform.
Both ends of the thing
Back then, Jack Ma could be described as a generation of post-8090 figures, and every year on Double 11, we huddled in front of the dormitory computer to grab those 9 pieces of 9 free shipping shirts, and when we received the goods, we were full of gratitude.
When I first started college in 2006, my living expenses were only 500 yuan, and every dollar was calculated in my heart except for eating and buying shoes.
And Taobao has given our generation more choices and convenience.
There are many e-commerce entrepreneurs around us, and there are many young people in the wholesale market in Guangzhou at that time, who use a mobile phone and a computer to explore the truth of the business from the small profits of one dropshipping.
Taobao and Tmall have given many young people the opportunity to change their own destiny.
These are all positive influences, and it was spread by Ma Dad's godfather Ma Yun at that time.
At the same time, on the other hand, with the birth of Ant Huabei, we are seeing more and more college students have luxuries that were otherwise very difficult to touch, new Apples and new computers.
At that time, the popularity of credit cards was very limited, and the limit was only 3,000 yuan, and the target must also be a prestigious school such as 211 985.
More and more young people have since become moonshiners and have never saved money again, which is also the change brought by Ma Yun.
On the one hand, it makes the life of young people more convenient, on the other hand, it also makes more and more young people more and more burdensome.
After all, behind every debt there is a clear numerical price, and many people sink and can no longer extricate themselves.
Take care of yourself
For many entrepreneurs, Jack Ma's words and deeds have a different magic.
Every episode of Win China has amassed a large number of Jack Ma's fans, his wisdom, his eloquence, his rigor, and his Ma's English have all given countless entrepreneurs countless impulses to worship passionately.
This time Jack Ma's retreat has also brought new entrepreneurial thinking, that is, what kind of enterprise is a really good sustainable enterprise, and how should entrepreneurs define themselves in our country to find a way to self-identity and redemption!
Many people are surprised by the end of the ant, but in fact all this is foreshadowed.
Entrepreneurs in our country need to have a sensitive awareness, and if you don't, it's not unusual for you to be eliminated by the times.
From anti-monopoly to double reduction, behind every policy is actually a new value balance and new cognitive guidance.
Nowadays, China can produce a large number of cheap and high-quality goods, but it does not have its own core chips, does not have its own independent and controllable industrial software, which is behind the problems faced by the entire country's development.
We have many excellent entrepreneurs in their respective fields, profits from a small start, until they master a large number of social resources, create tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of profits, can influence the sky, the next can change the trend of the industry.
At this time, we must consider a core issue, that is, how can we enable more people and more citizens to live better and better in the world, behind this technology and distribution, behind this is also new value.
At this time, we call for enterprises with scientific and technological power, at this time we call for social value enterprises, at this time we call for enterprises that can earn dollars, only in this way will our citizens live a good life. Otherwise, everything is a dream bubble, fleeting.
And this is what our entrepreneurs need to consider, small businesses can consider the survival value of individuals to develop freely, large enterprises need to look at the next decade, how our country can become better depends on the efforts of each of our organizations.
If the Internet giants all lend money and claim to be science and technology enterprises, such a country has no future.
The entrepreneurs of the future must belong to those players who balance social value and corporate value, which you and I cannot escape, which is the fate of our current generation.
If we don't, our next generation will only be an installer forever, watching these foundries move around, cutting their waists for three points of profit.