Alibaba chairman Jack Ma Yun blasted the four largest mainland commercial banks for slashing the limit for each transaction depositors can make through Alipay, China’s answer to PayPal and owned by the e-commerce giant

April 7, 2014 Leave a comment

Alibaba boss blasts banks for Alipay cut
Monday, March 24, 2014
Alibaba chairman Jack Ma Yun blasted the four largest mainland commercial banks for slashing the limit for each transaction depositors can make through Alipay, China’s answer to PayPal and owned by the e-commerce giant.

The criticism from Ma, posted on his Sina microblog yesterday, was prompted by China Construction Bank (0939) slashing single transaction amounts through Alipay to 5,000 yuan (HK$6,230) from 50,000 yuan.

That followed similar moves from Industrial and Commercial Bank (1398), Bank of China (3988) and Agricultural Bank of China (1288).

“The market is not scared of competition. But it does fear injustice,” Ma wrote. “This time, Alipay is proud even though defeated. However, success should not be decided by monopoly and power but by the users themselves.”

The move from lenders is believed to be a bid to discourage investment in Yuebao – Alibaba’s financial products platform – that generally offers higher returns than conventional bank deposits.

That came as former People’s Bank of China adviser David Li Daokui said that breaking up the monopoly of major banks and speeding up securitization of mortgage loans could be the first steps in financial reform this year.

LING WANG

 

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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