Liquidity Event
Ma controls 206.1 million shares of Alibaba, 35 million of which are held by a non-profit organization called SymAsia Foundation Ltd., according to the filing. Another 50 million shares are held by APN Ltd., a Cayman Islands company in which Ma has a 70 percent equity interest and Tsai has 30 percent. After subtracting the shares held by the foundation, Ma’s economic interest in Alibaba is about 7.4 percent.
The pair has pledged all of their shares in APN to secure a future liquidity event involving Alipay, an online-payments business, according to a framework agreement detailed in the prospectus. Under terms of the agreement, APN’s liability to fund the event, which could be in the form of a public offering, sale or transfer, will be capped at $500 million.
In addition to Alibaba, Ma has an interest in Yunfeng Capital, a private-equity firm he co-founded in 2010. The billionaire said in a Sina Weibo posting in 2013 that any profits from Yunfeng would go to charity.
Film Production
He also acquired a 20 percent stake in financial software company Hundsun Technologies in April 2014, and owns 5.5 percent of Huayi Brothers Media Corp., a Beijing-based film and TV production company.
The former English teacher also owns a five-bedroom, 7,088 square-foot duplex on the 52nd floor of a Mid-Levels district tower in Hong Kong, according to the Standard. He paid HK$300 million ($38.7 million) in November 2007 for the penthouse, with the per-square-foot price setting a record for residential properties in Asia at the time, the Hong Kong newspaper said.
Alibaba operates online platforms such as Taobao Marketplace and Tmall.com that connect retail brands with consumers. The Chinese company makes most of its sales from commissions and advertising and competes with Tencent and Baidu Inc. for the more than 600 million Internet users in China.
Tsai will own about 3 percent of Alibaba after the offering. The Yale Law School graduate quit a $700,000-a-year private-equity job to join Alibaba for $50 a month and an interest in the business. He was promoted to executive vice chairman in 2013, less than a year after leading negotiations to repurchase an Alibaba stake from Yahoo.