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China's richest man Jack Ma to stand down from Alibaba
China's richest man, Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma, has announced his retirement.
In an interview with the New York Times Ma said he would step down on September 10 to pursue educational charity work.
Mr Ma told the New York Times that his decision to stand down was not the end of an era but “the beginning of an era” and that he “loved” education.
The announcement is likely to send shock waves through the Chinese technology industry. It is still reeling from allegations of rape against Amazon rival JD.com’s chief executive Richard Liu. Shares in the company dropped this week after it emerged that US police had opened an investigation into the claims, which Liu denied through his lawyers.
Alibaba, which offers small businesses a platform to trade, was founded in 1999 and has become China's answer to Amazon, worth $420bn.
Ma’s journey to becoming a billionaire was unconventional. Born to two performers of “ping tang” a former popular traditional musical storytelling technique that was later banned under China’s cultural revolution, he worked as an English teacher. He later created his own translation business, followed by a web directory and later Alibaba, which was the first platform of its kind to offer small Chinese businesses an opportunity to export to the West. He is now understood to be worth more than $40 billion.
The surprise announcement followed an interview published on Thursday, in which Ma discussed ambitions to become more like Bill Gates and focus and wind down his business commitments to focus on philanthropy. Mr Ma told Bloomberg that he would never accumulate the wealth of Gates but said that he planned to quit earlier than him.
Ma recently has been a vocal advocate for Chinese technology companies ramping up research and development in order to avoid losing out to the US.