Jack Ma: Tycoon who soared on China's tech dreams grounded by regulators

BEIJING (AFP) – Jack Ma, the ebullient and unconventional billionaire founder of tech giant Alibaba and the totem of China's entrepreneurial brilliance, now finds himself up against a Communist leadership seemingly intent on hacking back his empire and issuing a lesson that no one is bigger than the party.

Ma, the most recognizable face in Asian business with a fortune estimated at around $58 billion, has already faced the ignominy of having the world's biggest-ever IPO spiked by Chinese regulators days before its launch.

The November share sale was set to see his wealth bulge to more than $70 billion in a record-breaking listing of the group's Ant Group financial arm in Hong Kong and Shanghai.

But Chinese regulators abruptly pulled the deal, over what initially appeared to be concerns about the company's reach into the finances of hundreds of millions of Chinese people.

It was a brutal public rebuke to Ma, who was then called in for dressing down by regulators and has since evaporated from the spotlight he normally so ably commands.

Now China's poster boy for enterprise finds himself again caught in the glare of the Communist-run state, with Thursday's announcement of an anti-monopoly probe into Alibaba, the tech giant he founded, and the summoning of Ant Group by regulators.