Billionaire Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., speaks during an event. (Photographer: Dario Pignatelli/Bloomberg)
(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- When Jack Ma took to a Shanghai conference stage in October, China’s most famous entrepreneur was on the brink of pulling off an unprecedented $35 billion initial public offering for the finance juggernaut he co-founded two decades earlier. Ant Group Co.’s listing would value the company at more than $300 billion and swell Ma’s own fortune beyond its already blistering $61 billion, cementing his position a...