{"id":1047,"date":"2018-09-08T06:53:21","date_gmt":"2018-09-08T06:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/?p=1047"},"modified":"2018-09-08T06:53:21","modified_gmt":"2018-09-08T06:53:21","slug":"alibabas-jack-ma-to-retire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/?p=1047","title":{"rendered":"Alibaba’s Jack Ma to retire"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York,\u00a0<\/strong>Jack Ma, Alibabas co-founder and executive chairman, has said that he plans to step down from the Chinese e-commerce giant on Monday to pursue philanthropy in education, a changing of the guard for the $420 billion internet company.<\/p>\n

In an exclusive New York Times interview, the Chinese billionaire said that his retirement was not the end of an era but “the beginning of an era”.<\/p>\n

“I love education,” the Chinese billionaire said, adding that he would be spending more of his time and fortune focused on education.<\/p>\n

A former English teacher, Ma co-founded Alibaba with 17 others out of his apartment in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, in 1999.<\/p>\n

He built it into one of the world’s most consequential e-commerce and digital payments companies, transforming how Chinese people shop and pay for things which fueled his net worth to more than $40 billion, making him China’s richest man.<\/p>\n

Ma is revered by many Chinese, some of whom have put his portrait in their homes to worship in the same way that they worship the God of Wealth.<\/p>\n

Ma will remain on Alibaba’s board of directors and continue to mentor the company’s management.<\/p>\n

He will turn 54 on Monday, which is also a holiday in China known as Teacher’s Day.<\/p>\n

The retirement makes Ma one of the first founders among a generation of prominent Chinese internet entrepreneurs to step down from their companies.<\/p>\n

Firms including Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and JD.com have flourished in recent years, growing to nearly rival American internet behemoths like Amazon and Google in their size, scope and ambition.<\/p>\n

Last month, Alibaba reported a 60 per cent increase in quarterly sales, even as profits fell.<\/p>\n

The company’s annual revenue totals about 250 billion yuan ($40 billion).<\/p>\n

For Chinese tycoons to step aside in their 50s is rare; they usually remain at the top of their organisations for many years.<\/p>\n

In an interview earlier this week, Ma had signaled that he was thinking about focusing more on philanthropy. He cited the Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates as an example.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York,\u00a0Jack Ma, Alibabas co-founder and executive chairman, has said that he plans to step down from the Chinese e-commerce giant on Monday to pursue philanthropy in education, a changing of the guard for the $420 billion internet company. In an exclusive New York Times interview, the Chinese billionaire said that his retirement was not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1047","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1047"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1049,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047\/revisions\/1049"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}