Jack Ma is giving up the reins of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. after presiding over one of the most spectacular creations of wealth the world has ever seen.
The former English teacher steps down as executive chairman of China's largest company on his 55th birthday after amassing a $41.8 billion fortune — a trove surpassed in Asia only by India's Mukesh Ambani, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
His record-breaking rise from entrepreneur working out of his apartment in 1999 to jet-setting e-commerce mogul is one for the history books, mirroring China's own evolution from technological backwater to the world's No. 2 economy.