Ο Jack Ma resigns as tech giant at just 54 - Although he started out as a simple English teacher, his fortune now exceeds $ 40 billion
China's largest technology and e-commerce group, Alibaba Group, has lost its chairman and co-founder since 1999, Jack Ma, who announced that, although only 54 years old, he is stepping down to focus on action in a charity. Which he certainly has the money to do, as he is considered one of the richest Chinese today (if not the richest), with a fortune that exceeds close to $ 40 billion.
Although started by a simple English teacher, Ma, who was born in 1964, rose rapidly to Chinese and international business. Until 2013 he was the CEO of Alibaba and in 2014 he became its Executive Chairman, guiding it in a continuous expansion inside and outside China.
Alibaba - which started in a Chinese apartment building in Hangzhou and now has a market capitalization of more than $ 420 billion - is considered the analogue of the American Amazon and in 2017 had revenues of about $ 40 billion through a wide range of technology and business activities. , as well as its shareholdings in other companies such as Weibo.
Its annual active e-commerce customers are estimated at 524 million, it sends about 55 million parcels of products every day, while Alipay's electronic payment system has over 870 million users.
Ma has been the founder of the Jack Ma Charitable Foundation since 2014 with a focus on education, modeled on the foundation that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his wife set up years ago when he left the company. Ma said he admired Gates's example and wanted to follow in his footsteps. As he told Bloomberg, "I have been preparing my Foundation for ten years. There is so much to learn from Bill Gates. "I will never be so rich, but at least I can retire earlier than him."
However, it is very unusual for a head of a Chinese company to leave at such a young age and perhaps that is why Alibaba shares in the US stock market, where it was listed in 2014, moved down.
Alibaba has not yet announced who will succeed Ma as CEO, who is expected to remain on the company's board of directors. He told the New York Times that his official departure would be on Monday, his 54th birthday, which is also the so-called "teacher's holiday" in China (as he has been a teacher since then). great love for education).
In July 2016, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, during his visit to China, had met with Jack Ma and they had discussed the strengthening of Alibaba's activities in Greece.
