His opening remarks – thanks to a transcription and translation by Interconnected – at the summit described himself as “quite torn about whether to speak” but in the end he decided as “I am basically retired at this point, so I thought I would speak freely at this unofficial forum and share the non-professional views of a non-professional individual”.
His speech came the day after deciding on the pricing of Ant’s initial public offering IPO. Ma said: “This is the largest listing ever priced in the history of the entire human race, and the pricing happened in a place other than New York City. This was unthinkable five years ago, even three years ago, but miracles happen.”
A few days after the speech and regulators called in the company and Ma, who might be basically retired but has effective control of Ant. The IPO was then postponed and stricter restrictions started to be put into place both for Ant and Alibaba.
Ant’s IPO in Hong Kong and Shanghai’s stock exchanges would have raised at least $34bn from nearly $3 trillion in advanced orders for shares and valued the company at $313bn.
Ma’s speech effectively said China should take the lead in “sustainable, green and inclusive world trade” but for this to happen policymakers and regulators had to use technology and trust innovators rather than aim for “zero risk”.
He added: “The competition of the future is a competition of innovation, not a competition of regulatory skills….
“We must transition from the old way of people looking for money, businesses looking for money, to money looking for people and money looking for good businesses. The only standard to evaluate this system is whether something is universal, inclusive, green, and sustainable. The cutting-edge technologies backing this standard, like big data, cloud computing, and blockchain are already ready today to take on this huge responsibility….
“It is time to think about how to build a new type of financial system through digital currency, to think about the future for the entire world, to think about how global trade will get done, and even more so to think about how the world can have a digital currency built on top of battle-tested technology. It is really about solving the problem of sustainable, green and inclusive world trade.”
It was an image for the world of Ant and Alibaba’s own successes over the past 21 years. But just as Ant Group’s 18-strong international corporate venturing unit under Kenny Man has increasingly found it hard to do deals in the US facing American authority opposition in the past few years, instead turning to southeast Asia, Israel and Europe, so its freedom to manoeuvre and operate in China is subject to officials.
Ant being able to use another $30bn of cash proceeds from the IPO to invest in technology and corporate venturing is now on hold.
And while Ma finished his speech referring to the pandemic, he was right more broadly in the sacrifice required: “So I would like to conclude by saying that today’s human society has reached a most critical juncture….
“A new financial system is the way of the future. Whether we like it or not, it will be formed. Whether we do it or not, someone will do it. In the future, I believe, reform will require sacrifice, there will be a price to pay. Our generation has to do this kind of reform, but it may only be visible to the next generation. We may be the one who must carry this burden forward. This is a historical opportunity and a historical responsibility.”
This month’s issue of Global Corporate Venturing will look at the financial sector and Kaloyan Andonov’s analysis of Ant’s corporate venture capital activity.
