Have you ever wondered why Jack Ma gave up the controlling position of Alipay? Is he really going to donate Alipay to the state?
In fact, after going around in a circle, the winner was Jack Ma in the end.
Recently, the central bank issued a document confirming that Alipay was changed to no actual controller. As soon as this news came out, netizens said that Ma Yun donated Alipay to the country.
The absence of an actual controller does not mean that the company is donated to the state, and Alipay is still 100% controlled by Ant Financial. The two largest shareholders of Ant Financial are Hangzhou Junhan and Hangzhou Junao, which hold 31.04% and 22.42% of the shares respectively.
So what's going on with this non-actual controller? Because at the beginning of last year, Ant Financial had become non-actual controller. Alipay, as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ant Financial, naturally became no actual controller. This time, the central bank is just confirming what has happened.
Previously, Ma Yun, Jing Xiandong, Jiang Fang and other Alibaba executives achieved control of Ant Financial by holding Hangzhou Yunbo, and several of them acted in concert, which means that others entrusted their voting rights to Ma Yun.
In this way, Jack Ma holds 53.46% of the voting rights of Ant Financial, and Jack Ma also realizes top-down control of Ant Financial and Alipay.
But as the founder of Ali and Alipay, why did Ma Yun take the initiative to give up his controlling stake this time?
In 2020, Ant Financial was preparing to go public, and its valuation was as high as 2 trillion at that time. But just a few days before the listing, the regulator suddenly called a halt. Because at this time, the regulator found that although Ant Financial was packaged as a technology company, it was actually still a financial company, and the leverage ratio was very high.
At that time, some experts said that Ant Financial's registered capital was only 3 billion, but it used ABS to continuously expand the scale of credit, and once there was a problem in the capital chain, the consequences would be unimaginable.
After Ant's listing was suspended, they also began to cooperate with the relevant departments to carry out rectification, one of which was the transformation of equity, one was to introduce more shareholders, and the other was to make Ant Financial have no actual controller.
In other words, Ali's executives used to act in concert, but now they have become independent shareholders. On the surface, Jack Ma lost absolute control, but in fact, as one of the largest individual shareholders, Ant Financial successfully rectified, and the final winner is still Jack Ma.
After Ant Financial completes its rectification, it is expected that they will restart their listing. Jack Ma currently holds about 6.2% of Ant Group's shares indirectly.
If Ant Group can go public, then Jack Ma's 6.2% stake will become priceless. According to Ant Group's valuation of 2 trillion yuan, the market value of this 6.2% equity exceeds 120 billion.
In addition, as a huge financial company, it is actually a good thing to complete rectification in the regulatory department, which means more compliance, and only compliance can have greater development.
Alipay's initial development was almost barbaric. With Alibaba's rapid progress, Alipay's scale has rapidly become bigger and stronger. With millions of merchants and hundreds of millions of users, a large amount of capital precipitation, it is indeed very dangerous to have no supervision. This is especially true after Ant cut into the credit market.
At that time, there was also a lack of supervision in the market, or the relevant regulatory measures and laws and regulations were not perfect at that time. Xu Jiayin's Evergrande wealth was not effectively supervised, which eventually led to a 40 billion thunderstorm and tens of thousands of investors were implicated.
There is also the planting system that officially thundered last month, and the current deficit is also calculated at the level of 100 billion. Therefore, for Ma Yun, on the surface, it is a loss of control, but in fact, the company has become safer and more stable, not only is it expected to be listed in the short term, but also the development can be more sustainable in the long run, so Ma Yun, as a major shareholder, is still the final winner.