Billionaire Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba Group
Holding Ltd.
Jack Ma has become the richest person in Asia .
The 50-year-old founder of Alibaba Group Holding
Ltd. (BABA) , China’s biggest e-commerce
company, passed Li Ka-shing , the Hong Kong
property and ports tycoon who has held the top
spot in the region since April 5, 2012, according to
the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
“I am nothing but happy when young people from
China do well,” Li, 86, said by his spokeswoman in
Hong Kong. A spokesman at Alibaba declined to
comment on Ma’s net worth.
Ma, a former English teacher who started the
Hangzhou, China-based company in his apartment
in 1999, has added $25 billion to his fortune this
year, riding a 54 percent surge in the company’s
shares since its September initial public offering.
He has a $28.6 billion fortune, according to the
Bloomberg ranking. Li has a net worth of $28.3
billion.
“The billionaires in China are growing their wealth
faster because China’s economy is still developing,
with plenty of room for growth,” said Francis
Ying, an analyst at Yuanta Research. “ Hong Kong
is already a mature market.”
Alibaba’s $259 billion market capitalization makes
it larger than Amazon.com Inc. and EBay Inc.
combined, and more valuable than all but eight
companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.
More than half of Ma’s wealth comes from his 6.3
percent stake of Alibaba, valued at $16.3 billion.
He also controls almost half of the closely held
finance unit and owner of Alipay, a service similar
to PayPal.
Public Offering
Ma’s interest in the online-payment company is
expected to dilute in the next three to five years
with new investors or stock distribution to
employees. Ma won’t realize any economic benefit
from the dilution, Alibaba has said.
Alibaba raised a record $25 billion in its Sept. 18
IPO, selling shares for $68 each. The American
depositary receipts rose 1.05 percent to $104.97
at the close in New York .
“If you look at the whole Chinese Internet space
as a group, it’s definitely getting very
significant,” said Tony Chu, a money manager for
RS Investment, which oversees about $22.3 billion.
Alibaba has become “a global stock which you
cannot ignore,” he said.
The fortune of Hong Kong’s Li, who controls
Cheung Kong Holdings Ltd. (1) , one of the world’s
three biggest property developers, has fallen $1.9
billion this year, according to the Bloomberg
ranking. While shares of the real estate company
gained this year, some of his other investments,
including Husky Energy Inc., have dropped.
Plastic Flowers
The billionaire started with a plastic flower
factory that he opened after World War II. He
began investing in Hong Kong’s property market in
1967, after riots from China’s Cultural Revolution
depressed prices and has expanded his investments
to include real estate, ports and
telecommunications.
Li is nicknamed “Superman” by the local media for
his investing prowess. He forecast in 2007 that
China ’s stock-market bubble would burst and
predicted in 2009 the rally in Hong Kong home
prices that would follow.
To contact the reporters on this story: Zijing Wu in
Hong Kong at zwu17@bloomberg.net ; Sterling
Wong in Singapore at swong470@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Peter Newcomb at pnewcomb2@bloomberg.net
Robert LaFranc

pictures of him with the title ?