Billionaire investor and Alibaba founder Jack Ma skipped the “African Business Heroes,” a TV program he created, raising speculations of his whereabouts, Bloomberg reports. Ma hasn’t been seen in public since Chinese regulators halted Ant’s $35 billion IPO and launched an antitrust probe into Alibaba.

  • “Africa’s Business Heroes” showrunners replaced Ma as the judge in a November telecast and removed his photo from the website. 
  • Ma has repeatedly rebuked the “pawnshop” mentalities of government overseers 
  • Ma’s missing the TV show was linked to “scheduling conflicts” by an Alibaba spokesperson.
  • Reports link Ma’s absence from the African TV show to advice by the government to stay in the country.
  • The crackdown on Ma’s companies has ignited a series of regulatory decrees that threaten to reshape China’s online operators’ landscape.
  • Regulators are planning to force Ant to divest equity investments in some financial companies, curbing its influence over the sector.

Alibaba’s stock is currently declining. 9988: HKG is down 2.15%