Chinese billionaires Jack Ma and Joe Tsai have pledged chunks of their combined $35bn stake in ecommerce group Alibaba in exchange for significant loans from investment banks, company documents show.
The share pledges, made to banks including UBS, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs and others, were undertaken by offshore companies controlling more than half of the two billionaires’ stakes in Alibaba, which totalled 5.8 per cent as of December. In share pledging, banks accept stock as collateral for loans but the borrower retains ownership of the shares.
The amounts of most of the share pledges were not disclosed in the documents but the pair have repeatedly turned to borrowing against their stock since Alibaba listed in the US in 2014, the documents seen by the Financial Times show.