Alibaba's Jack Ma is now China's richest person with $32b wealth

SHANGHAI - The largest stock offer in history has made Mr Jack Ma, founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, China's richest person with a fortune of US$25 billion (S$32 billion), an annual wealth ranking for the country showed on Tuesday.

Mr Ma, who had to persuade friends to give him US$60,000 to start Alibaba just 15 years ago after being rejected by US venture capitalists, now leads a company valued at more than US$200 billion after listing on the New York Stock Exchange on Sept 19.

"It has been an amazing year for China's best tycoons despite the jitters about the Chinese economy," said China-based luxury magazine publisher Hurun Report in its annual rich list.

Mr Ma reaped more than US$800 million from selling shares through the initial public offering in Alibaba, based on company filings, with the value of his remaining stake of 7.8 per cent surging to more than US$17 billion by Monday.

Last year the estimated wealth of the former English teacher turned Internet entrepreneur was just over US$4.0 billion, which did not even place him in the top 20, according to the 2013 survey.

Mr Ma's parents were poorly educated and his father depended on a monthly retirement allowance of just US$40 to support the family, according to Chinese state media.

Alibaba's listing raised a total of US$25 billion.

Only one other of Alibaba's 18 co-founders made the rich list this year, according to the Hurun Report. He is Simon Xie, now vice-president of Alibaba's China investment, with US$1.6 billion.

Mr Ma pushed property tycoon Wang Jianlin, whose Wanda company bought US cinema chain AMC Entertainment, into second place from first last year with a fortune of US$24.2 billion. The bursting of China's real estate bubble chased most developers out of the top 10, Hurun Report said.

A new face, Li Hejun of renewable energy firm Hanergy, tied for third place with US$20.8 billion, alongside beverage magnate Zong Qinghou of Wahaha.

But technology commanded half of the top 10. Pony Ma of Tencent, operator of China's most popular instant messaging application WeChat, was fifth with US$18.1 billion.

Robin Li of China's dominant search engine Baidu was sixth, Richard Liu of Alibaba competitor JD.com took ninth, and Lei Jun of upstart mobile phone producer Xiaomi was 10th.