Who is Jack Ma, the man who wants to buy AC Milan
Born in 1964, Mr. Ma used to work as English teacher, but in less than 20 years he became the richest man in Asia with a personal asset estimated in £ 25 billion.
When he was only 10 year old he used to cycle for 45 minutes to meet English speaking tourists outside a hotel in a suburb of his hometown Hangzhou and learn English.
With a trip in the United States in 1999 he turned his fortunes around. During that trip Mr. Ma discovered the internet and when he moved back to China he persuaded 17 people (who are his business partners now) to invest £ 60.000 on Alibaba, which had its first headquarters in Mr. Ma’s private home in Hangzhou.
In 2005 he was invited to the Davos World Economic Forum as part of the group of Young Global Leaders. He loves basketball (LA Lakers) and football, so much so he owns China Super League side Guangzhou Evergrande (the former club of Marcello Lippi, Alberto Gilardino, Alessandro Diamanti and Fabio Cannavaro).
Alibaba is now the China e-commerce leader. With more than 632 million customers in the country, the group owns some of the most important e-companies, websites and social media in China.
Taobao (a Chinese version of Ebay), Aliplay (Paypal), Weibo (a micro-blogging platform similar to Twitter) and Alibaba Pictures Group, which has already invested over £ 3 billion in China’s movie market, are all companies belonging to Mr. Ma and Alibaba.
Mr. Ma closed an important deal with the Italian government back in 2014 and now he wants to buy AC Milan, though Silvio Berlusconi will have the final word on the club’s sale.
Lorenzo Bettoni @lorebetto
