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| Rupert Hoogewerf |
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| Rupert Hoogewerf (Photo credit: Fantake) |
Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of the Hurun Report, described Ma's success as "a stark reminder of the growth potential that is being realized in the emerging markets". Including Ma, five of the top 10 billionaires on this year's list come from the IT industry, two more than last year.
"A large number of IT companies have accelerated the process of going public over the past two years. At the same time, the integration within the industry has also reached its peak. Therefore, the wealth of the IT industry has highly concentrated," Hoogewerf said....
Hoogewerf also predicted that more Chinese billionaires will come from new media and entertainment, as the number of billionaires from traditional industries such as property, manufacturing and mining has been declining.
He also believed bio-technology and renewable energy are very likely to give birth to a brand new Alibaba or another new tycoon like Jack Ma. This year's third place winner Li Hejun, chairman and CEO of Hanergy Holdings Group, is one example for the rise of the new energy industry, as he has been making acquisitions in the US and Europe to shore up his advantage in China's solar power industry. His personal wealth is as much as $20.8 billion.
However, this year's list shows the effect that the corruption crackdown and austerity program has had on current and former members of the rich list, with several now facing criminal punishment or fleeing overseas. They include Liu Han of conglomerate Hanlong, who was sentenced to death for gang crimes, and Xu Ming of conglomerate Shide who is awaiting sentencing in a corruption case linked to disgraced politician Bo Xilai.
"The anti-corruption drive has a strong effect. We found 18 people from last year's list in trouble with the authorities," Hoogewerf said.More at China Economic Net.
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| Rupert Hoogewerf |
Hurun Report chairman and chief researcher Rupert Hoogewerf said the list shows "the entrepreneurial spirit that has caught China seems not to be abating".
"Jack Ma is the 11th Number One we have had in China in the last 16 years, showing the dynamism of the Chinese economy, and a stark reminder of the growth potential that is being realised in the emerging markets".
The Hurun Report's rich list is one of the most closely-watched and accurate assessments of wealth in China. The annual report has been published for the past 16 years. Individuals or families required at least $2.3bn this year to make it onto the list, which is more than 15 times the amount needed a decade ago.
There are a record 354 so-called "dollar billionaires" in China this year, Hurun said, which is a 13% increase from last year.
Overall, the total wealth of the 1,271 people on the list is worth $1.4tn this year. Hurun said it had been "an amazing year" for the online retail and other IT sectors and a "good year" for entertainment, investments, cars, renewable energy, pharmaceuticals and manufacturing.
On the flipside, Hurun said it had "been a bad year for steel and shipping" and that real estate "could have done a lot worse, bearing in mind the state of the market".More at the BBC.
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| +Wei Gu |
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| +Shaun Rein |
In an effort to stave off competition, Alibaba has attempted to launch new products, including WeChat competitor Laiwang in 2003, and acquire firms, including an 18% stake in Sina's Weibo - essentially China's Twitter - which recently announced an initial public offering (IPO) share floatation of its own.
"I think Alibaba is running scared - as they're about to IPO, it's really damaging for them," says Shaun Rein, managing director of the China Market Research Group.
"Jack Ma looks desperate right now."
And Tencent hasn't been intimidated by Alibaba's big spends, as it has deep pockets of its own.
The firm recently bought a large stake in JD.com, the second-biggest e-commerce site in China behind Alibaba, for $215m. Alibaba's Tmall, which allows business to sell to consumers, has about a 50% market share, followed by JD.com with 19%, and Tencent's own platform with 7%, according to research firm Analysys...
More at the BBC.And the competition is just heating up. "In the next six to 10 months, you're going to see a lot of consolidation in the mobile start-up space," says Mr Rein.
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| Helen Wang |
People who speculate that Ma’s aim is to acquire Yahoo! may have missed the point. Jack Ma is unlikely to be a qualified suitor. He hasn’t proved that he can turn Yahoo! around in China. There is no reason to believe that he can turn Yahoo! around in the U. S.
Ma’s real intention may very well be to expand his Alibaba Group to the U. S. market. “I want to learn one thing here,” he said, “how we can help U.S. SMEs (small and medium enterprises). What value we can create between us, Amazon and eBay.”
That has always been Jack Ma’s ambition. Today, Alibaba already has 15 million users from outside China. Taobao has grown to over 300 million registered users and commands a 90 percent market share. Ma believes that Taobao will grow even faster in the future.
As Jack Ma knows very well, it won’t be easy to succeed in the U. S. market. “The best way to succeed in business is to learn from others’ mistakes,” Ma said. “Many people have written books about Alibaba’s success. But I really don’t think we are so smart. We have made many mistakes. One book I want to write someday is ‘Alibaba’s 1001 Mistakes.’”More in Forbes
Jack Ma: looking a US gateway? via WikipediaAlibaba's CEO Jack Ma, the leading e-commerce site in China, made some waves by suggesting he might be buying the struggling US-site Yahoo. Serial entrepreneur Marc van der Chijs discusses on his weblog how Alibaba could use Yahoo to get into the US market.By buying Yahoo or taking a big stake in it, Alibaba can enter the US market. I think Alibaba wants to grow outside of its homebase of China, and this may be a great way to kickstart that. Alibaba was the reason that Ebay never succeeded in China, despite investing tons of resources. Now Alibaba wants to fight with Ebay on Ebay’s home turf. Jack Ma even announced that he plans to live in the US for a year, I don’t think he would do that just to buy a share in Yahoo.
But Alibaba likely can’t do it alone, even if it wants to buy Yahoo completely they probably can’t finance it. So they will need partners, and it seems both Silver Lake (a PE fund) and the Russian DST fund are joining Alibaba in a consortium. Seems like a good combination to get Yahoo back on track to me...
I think there will be a problem: The US government. I don’t think they will like a Chinese company to take control of one of America’s biggest online properties, with a huge database of emails and credit card details, plus one of the biggest search engines. It won’t be the first time they block a deal (think Huawei trying to buy 3Com), and I would not be surprised if a Alibaba/Yahoo deal would be blocked in the same way.More at Marc van de Chijs' weblog
Marc van der Chijs
Paul DenlingerInstead of hiring local Chinese who had rich experience in the local Chinese market, it instead went to Harvard recruiting MBA graduates. From what everyone had seen, Groupon was setting itself up for a fall in China.
But then, Groupon announced that it would partner with Tencent to develop the social buying market. Tencent, based in Shenzhen, has long been the instant messaging and virtual currency leader in China, with more than 600M registered users in China.The not-yet closed deal is an effort to let Groupon look nice for a possible IPO, focuses on the US market, rather than on a good China strategy. Tencent is a huge company, but has a bad reputation on e-commerce.
Another unmentioned player is Alibaba/Taobao, led by Jack Ma, which is the undisputed leader in e-commerce in China. For many in China, Jack Ma is a marketing genius, regularly inviting former US presidents and business leaders to major marketing events in China at the company's headquarters in Hangzhou. In addition, he has a close and cordial relationship with China's premier Wen Jiabao. For the Chinese government, Taobao's business platform has the advantage of being able to provide important leading information about the state of China's exports, in a way which is even more accurate and reliable than the government's own Bureau of Statistics. Without a doubt, Taobao/Alibaba would take a dim view of Groupon and Tencent's attempt to elbow in on their e-commerce space. Jack Ma has a famously long memory, and while he may not seek to hit back at Tencent and Groupon immediately, he may well wait for the right opportunity.More in Business Insider.
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| Jack Ma of Alibaba |
In 2004, I visited Alibaba at its headquarters in Hangzhou. It is located on a campus of three ten-story buildings in the northeastern part of Hangzhou, about a ten-minute taxi drive from West Lake. In the lobby, a flat panel TV was streaming video clips of Jack Ma speaking at various public events where his admirers, most of them in their twenties, were cheering him like a rock star. While visiting Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou, I felt the same “insanely great” energy of entrepreneurship as I felt in Silicon Valley. When I asked a senior manager at Alibaba whether the company was worried that it would be bought by eBay, I was blown away by the answer: “We will buy eBay!”As we know now, Ebay failed that epic struggle, that is still going on. Helen Wang:
First, eBay failed to recognize that the Chinese market and the business environment are very different from that of the West. EBay sent a German manager to lead the China operation and brought in a chief technology officer from the United States. Neither one spoke Chinese or understood the local market. It was eBay’s biggest mistake. Second, because the top management team didn’t understand the local market, they spent a lot of money doing the wrong things, such as advertising on the Internet in a country where small businesses didn’t use the Internet. The fact that eBay had a strong brand in the United States didn’t mean it would be a strong brand in China. Third, rather than adapt products and services to local customers, eBay stuck to its “global platform,” which again did not fit local customers’ tastes and preferences.Commercial
 Image by Fantake via Flickr |
| Helen Wang |
