What Happened to China's Superstar Entrepreneur Jack Ma? - WSJ

After Jack Ma criticized Chinese regulators, Beijing scuttled the initial public offering of his fintech giant Ant and he largely disappeared from public view. WSJ looks at recent videos of the billionaire to show how he got himself into trouble.

“Must Reads” for 8 February

Today’s “Must reads” in banking, fintech, payments, cybersecurity and risk management include:

• Gen Z is defining digital banking. FinTech is listening
• Treasury under Yellen to prioritize climate change, sanctions, AML reform
• How to defend against today's top 5 cyber threats - Help Net Security
• What Happens When Cybercriminals Target Industrial Robots?
• The U.S. Banking and Payments Market: A crucible of Fintech Innovation
• Robinhood raises another $2.4 billion, Eases trading curbs
• Jack Ma's Ant Group reportedly plans to transform into a financial holding company overseen by China's central bank

Beijing has put online giants on notice - Chinese trustbusters’ pursuit of Alibaba is only the start

“Acting on information, China’s State Administration for Market Regulation [SAMR] has started investigation [into] Alibaba Group for alleged monopoly conduct including implementing an ‘exclusive dealing agreement’.” This brief note, posted by Xinhua, the state news agency, on December 24th, was all it took to cut China’s mightiest online titan down to size. Not even the announcement three days later of an additional $6bn in share buy-backs arrested the slide in its share price. By December 28th it had fallen by 13%, wiping $91bn off the firm’s market capitalisation. American regulators, whose detailed charge-sheets against tech giants such as Facebook and Google in recent weeks elicited a yawn from investors, must have looked on with envy.

Read more at The Economist