Exclusive | Jack Ma’s office says he remains ‘very positive’ about Alibaba and clarifies that he will continue to hold the tech giant’s shares

Shares in Alibaba, the second-heaviest member on the Hang Seng Index with a 7.6 per cent weighting, fell by almost 10 per cent in Hong Kong
Jack Ma, who retired as Alibaba chairman in 2019, remains a major shareholder through his family trust

Hong Kong stock market

Zhou Xin

Published: 8:44pm, 17 Nov 2023

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Jack Ma’s office said the founder of Alibaba Group Holding remains “very positive” about one of China’s biggest technology companies, giving the market the assurance after a sell-off of the company’s shares weighed on Hong Kong’s key stock index.

The statement by the office of Ma, who retired as Alibaba chairman in 2019 but remains a major shareholder through his family trust, came after his JSP Investment and JC Properties trust units said in an overnight filing that they plan to sell US$870 million of Alibaba shares in instalments starting on November 21.

The phased sale is part of a long-standing and long term “preset conditional plan to do a partial sell-down for the future that was adopted in August and it won’t lead to any reduction of [Ma’s] holding of shares for now” and “not a single share has been sold”, according to Ma’s office. “We believe the current stock price is far below its fair value.”

Ma has full confidence in Alibaba and will continue to hold its shares, his office added.

The shares of Alibaba, the second-heaviest member on the Hang Seng Index with a 7.6 per cent weighting, fell by almost 10 per cent in Hong Kong today. The company announced overnight that it would not proceed with the full spin-off of its cloud computing unit after posting 9 per cent revenue growth in its September quarter. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

‘Would rather die on the beach than in my office’: Jack Ma on retirement

Ma, who co-founded one of the world’s largest e-commerce platforms in 1999, has not been involved in Alibaba’s daily operations since his retirement on his 55th birthday.

He has spent his retirement days travelling around the world, visiting agricultural laboratories in the Netherlands, a tuna farm in Japan and even a night market in Thailand.

Jack Ma returns to China to discuss AI with school in Hangzhou

In July last year, he travelled to the Wageningen University & Research (WUR), a public university in the Netherlands known for its agricultural studies, and visited a hi-tech greenhouse on campus as well as the Netherlands Plant Eco-phenotyping Centre, according to a statement on the university’s website.

He also became a lecturer, reviving his lifelong passion in education. He took up the University of Hong Kong’s honorary professorship on April 1 to conduct research in finance, agriculture and enterprise innovation for a three-year term ending in March 2026.

Ma, who taught English at the Hangzhou Dianzi University in the Zhejiang provincial capital before embarking on a career in entrepreneurship, would be the highest-profile addition to the faculty of the HKU Business School, as the institution invites successful businesspeople to bring real-world relevance to its academic courses. HKU was ranked 21st in the 2023 QS World University Rankings, while its Business and Economics course was 34th in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

Ma is no stranger to HKU, having been conferred an honorary Doctorate in Social Sciences in 2018 before his retirement by Hong Kong’s oldest tertiary institution. He has also been conferred an honorary professorship by the University of Tokyo, according to people familiar with the matter.