Alibaba’s Executive Vice Chairman is Forming a Multibillion-Dollar Family Office
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. executive vice chairman Joseph Tsai is setting up a multibillion-dollar family office to invest the wealth created by the Chinese e-commerce giant’s $25 billion New York initial public offering, people with knowledge the matter told Wall Street Journal.
Joseph
Tsai, Alibaba’s executive vice chairman, and other early Alibaba
executives are setting up the office in Hong Kong with an eye to opening
this summer, according to one of the people. Mr. Tsai controls a
roughly $6.5 billion stake in Alibaba, based on the company’s
prospectus. With the company’s shares now publicly traded and lockups
expiring, he and the other executives are looking to diversify their
wealth.
The
new office marks the arrival on the global investment scene of a new
generation of wealthy Chinese business executives who have cashed in on
the country’s Internet boom. Entrepreneurs like Alibaba’s founder Jack
Ma, one of the wealthiest people in Asia, and smartphone maker Xiaomi
Inc.’s Lei Jun, are bringing new ideas about how they want to use their
wealth, often backing friends’ technology ventures and supporting a
younger crop of investment managers. Asia’s previous generation of
billionaires had typically made their fortunes in real estate or mining
and focused on investments in other property companies or established
global private-equity funds.
Alibaba
is China’s largest e-commerce company and its IPO has been a windfall
for a number of big backers including Yahoo Inc. and Japan’s SoftBank
Corp. Its New York-listing in September catapulted a number of early
Alibaba executives to the top ranks of wealthy Chinese.
Source: Wall Street Journal
