Jack Ma: tycoon who soared on China's tech dreams grounded by regulators

Jack Ma, the unconventional billionaire founder of tech giant Alibaba and the totem of China's entrepreneurial brilliance, has stepped out of the limelight since a Communist Party crackdown that chopped back his empire.

The most recognisable face in Asian business, Ma has seen his fortune fall by around half to an estimated $25 billion after authorities pulled what would then have been the world's biggest-ever IPO in 2020.

The company changed the shopping habits of hundreds of millions of Chinese people and catapulted Ma to international stardom.

In 2014, Alibaba listed in New York in a world-record $25 billion offering.

Ant is still the world's largest digital payments platform, with hundreds of millions of monthly users on its Alipay app.

But any future listing appears a long way off, with fears persisting that its personal finance products reach too deeply into the pockets of ordinary Chinese.