Beijing (AFP)

Jack Ma, the most emblematic of Chinese billionaires, will see his pockets swell further with the IPO of Ant Group, a new record on the charts of this young retiree with a meteoric career.

The former English teacher, who owns 8.8% of the capital of Ant Group, should see his fortune climb to 71.1 billion dollars (61 billion euros) in the wake of the IPO of the The biggest online payment juggernaut ever (over USD 34 billion).

He would thus reach 11th place in the world ranking of billionaires calculated by the financial agency Bloomberg, notably doubling the heiress of L'Oréal, Françoise Bettencourt Meyer.

The Hangzhou (east) native has successfully retired: when he announced two years ago who was going to leave the management of Alibaba, he was still only the 19th largest fortune in the world, with 40 billion dollars.

But its investments in the e-commerce sector, in a country where cash is on the verge of disappearing, have only grown in value in recent years, especially with the coronavirus epidemic that has caused shopping to explode. online.

Jack Ma, 56, had the foreknowledge of this development when he co-founded Alibaba in 1999.

The Chinese media recount the beginnings: his rise from a poor background, a father struggling to support his family, a failed baccalaureate twice, odd jobs, until the creation of Alibaba in a Hangzhou apartment (east), with $ 60,000 borrowed from friends.

Jack Ma (Ma Yun by his Chinese name) had decided to give up his teaching profession at the university after discovering the internet during a trip to the United States and seized the possibility offered to companies to exchange their goods in line.

Likewise, he quickly understood the potential of smartphones: with his Alipay service, he was to pioneer mobile electronic payment.

These intuitions earned him a reputation as a visionary.

- From the CCP to Michael Jackson -

"The first time I used the internet, I typed on the keyboard and I said to myself: + Here is something (...) that will change the world and China +", he told the channel American CNN.

In 2006, the take-off of Alibaba's e-commerce platform, Taobao, forced the American eBay company to withdraw from the Chinese market, leaving the way open to its rival.

The eccentricities of Jack Ma, who sometimes cultivates a certain resemblance to ET, stand out in the corseted world of Chinese entrepreneurs: in 2017, he had made himself up as Michael Jackson at a company gala ...

He is nonetheless a member of the very austere ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

From Davos to Wall Street, he rubs shoulders with the greats of this world and promises Donald Trump to create 1 million jobs in the United States in January 2017, as the American billionaire is preparing to enter the White House.

He will withdraw his promise later, citing the trade war launched by the American president against his country.

The IPO of Ant Group in Hong Kong and Shanghai allows this child of Jack Ma to beat a new record, after that of Alibaba on Wall Street in 2014 (25 billion USD), dethroned last year by the Saudi Aramaco (29.4 billion).

In September 2018, Jack Ma announced that he would retire a year later, on his 55th birthday.

He intends to devote himself to works of philanthropy in education, like one of his models, the founder of Microsoft Bill Gates.

Superstitious on the edges, the billionaire has a weakness for the number 8, synonymous with fortune in Cantonese.

Retired as he is, he is perhaps not for nothing in the price of the Ant share: HK $ 80 in Hong Kong and 68.80 yuan in Shanghai ...

© 2020 AFP