The Bloomberg Billionaires Index projected Wednesday that the business mogul’s wealth had fallen by $4.1 billion over the past year, due to a massive fall in the valuation of Ant Group, the fintech giant that he co-founded but no longer controls. Ma, who also co-founded e-commerce firm Alibaba\n \n , has a 9.9% stake in Ant, according to Bloomberg. The entrepreneur, once Asia’s richest person, now has a net worth of approximately $30 billion, less than half of the $61.
Ma’s criticism, delivered just days before Ant was set to list in Shanghai and Hong Kong, kickstarted an unprecedented crackdown on private enterprise in China, which led to heightened regulatory scrutiny of other tech companies around the country. Chinese regulators pulled the plug on Ant’s $37 billion IPO in November 2020 and ordered the company to restructure its business. Since then, Ma has kept a very low profile.