Jack Ma has only appeared in public once since the Chinese government upset last October in an arson that led to the suspension of Ant Group’s initial public offering of $ 37 billion.
But the Financial Times got the flight details of his private jet, suggesting the 56-year-old Chinese billionaire is no longer there.
The flight books, compiled with data from Radarbox, a flight tracking company, also dispel rumors that he fled China to Singapore or was placed under house arrest. Instead, they suggest that Mom have access to his Gulfstream jet, which has a range that can easily transport him to New York or London.
Ma’s Gulfstream is in a private terminal in Hangzhou, the headquarters of the companies he founded, Alibaba and Ant Group. The plane, identified by the FT, has a itinerary that matches more than a dozen of the public appearances Mom made in the three months before he got into trouble with the authorities.
According to Radarbox’s data, no other private jet has been registered in China or the Cayman Islands, a popular spot for Chinese billionaires to register their aircraft.
The flight books show a dramatic slowdown in Mom’s busy schedule after he started lying low. Before October, Mom traveled on average once every three days. In January and February, he traveled only once a week, mainly to Beijing and the tropical island of Hainan, where Bloomberg reportedly played golf.
Nevertheless, it turns out that when Chinese regulators wanted to talk about Ant, it was Ma who flew to Beijing. He is the controlling shareholder of the payment group, but does not hold any formal position.
People close to Ant and Alibaba and regulators in Beijing confirmed that he was directly involved in negotiations on Ant’s future. One person close to the regulators complained that Ma was still going over their heads to plead his case with the leading communist party leaders. A friend of Mom’s agrees. “He still has the ability to get to the very top,” the person said.
The records show intense activity surrounding Ma’s controversial speech in Shanghai in October, in which he criticized state-owned banks and regulators. The day after he made the remarks, his plane flew to Beijing for a four-day stay.
A few days later, at 9pm on November 1, Mom flies back to Beijing from her hometown of Hangzhou. Chinese regulators announced shortly afterwards that they had called him in for a braai and that Ant would face new regulations that would effectively torpedo the IPO. Mom’s jet stood in Beijing for two weeks.
Its next flight to the capital came on Christmas Day, after China’s financial regulators publicly called on Ant Group for a second discussion on ‘financial supervision, fair competition and consumer protection’.
At the end of January, his plane was back in Beijing, when ants and regulators pointed out a restructuring plan that had been agreed upon but not yet publicly announced.
In contrast, the flight data before October give a picture of a billionaire who crossed China to collect awards and bumps with local officials.
At the end of August, Ma’s plane flew to Beijing where he received an award from the Jordanian government for his help in combating Covid-19. “Viruses do not have a passport, nor do they need visas,” Ma told the crowd of diplomats at the country’s embassy. A few days later he was in the air again, on his way to Kunming where he opened a new campus for his business school.
He and his plane were then spotted in the city of Dali, before returning to Hangzhou for another speech to open the school year.
On September 9, Ma landed in Chongqing where he ate kebabs on sticks and drank beer until late at night. He then flew to Changsha and Fuzhou for meetings with local officials before spoiling him. reganmian, the famous hot, dry noodles in Wuhan. He concluded the month with a speech in Haikou.
“My judgment of the future: it will be difficult in the short term, even more difficult in the medium term, but in the long term it will be good,” Ma told the crowd of businessmen. “It is now the turbulent period when the plane is moving through the clouds, so everyone must hold the steering wheel and fasten their seat belts.”
Alibaba referred questions to Mom’s charity, which did not respond to a request for comment. Ant Group did not respond to a request for comment.
Nian Liu contributed coverage from Beijing