Chief executive of Jack Ma’s Ant Group resigns

Ant Group chief Simon Hu has resigned from the company

Credit: Cheng Leng

The chief executive of Jack Ma’s fintech giant Ant Group has resigned from the company as it bids to appease Chinese regulators.

Simon Hu, who took the helm in 2019 having headed up the cloud arm of Mr Ma’s e-commerce behemoth Alibaba, has stepped down from his role, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Mr Hu had been working for Mr Ma’s Alibaba since 2005 after joining from the China Construction Bank. He stepped away from the business due to personal reasons, Bloomberg said citing unnamed sources.

Eric Jing, Ant’s chairman, is set to become chief executive effective immediately.

Ant Group is an affiliate of Mr Ma’s ecommerce giant Alibaba. The company was created to oversee Alipay, China’s primary digital payments service. It has more than 700m monthly customers with Alipay now viewed as the world’s largest mobile payments provider, ahead of PayPal.

The Telegraph has contacted Ant Group for comment on the matter.

Mr Hu’s departure comes a day after Ant Group outlined a set of financial self-disciple rules in order to please Beijing. Ant Group has faced intense scrutiny from regulators after executives were called into a meeting in December that led to the cancellation of Ant’s planned $35bn initial public offering.

Profile | Jack Ma

China has sought to bring in stricter controls around Mr Ma’s empire. Regulators fear the Ant Group could pose a systemic risk to the banking sector and plans to make it face similar rules to that of traditional banks.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang told the National People’s Congress that the regulation of fintech would be expanded and that he would move to stamp out monopolies.

Ant Group has moved to reign in some of its operations and has also brought its capital requirements in line with those of banks. It has also ruled out offering loans to minors through its consumer platform.

In January, it was reported the fintech company was set to transform itself into a financial holding company in order to align with the regulatory requirements.

Mr Ma stepped back from public events for two months following his December meeting with regulators. He has openly criticised the “pawnshop” model followed by China’s banks, and warned that innovation without risks would “kill innovation”.

Earlier in the year, Yi Gang, the governor of the People’s Bank of China, said that once the “problem is solved” around Ant Group its IPO could “go back to the track”.