It’s been a turbulent few months for Alibaba founder Jack Ma, ever since the Chinese government abruptly halted the initial public offering of his financial company Ant Group. Some of that turbulence has now spread to Yunfeng Capital, the private equity firm Ma set up in 2010 which has invested in some of China’s fastest-growing companies.
At The Wire, we periodically focus on prominent firms investing in China, introducing them to our readers and mapping their corporate and shareholding structures. So far, we’ve featured Hillhouse Capital, IDG Capital, and 5Y Capital. This time, we take a closer look at Yunfeng Capital, the firm with a reported $7.2 billion of assets under management according to PitchBook and ambitions to be a major player in China’s tech sector.A spokesperson for Yunfeng emailed The Wire to say that the figure from Pitchbook is not up-to-date but did not provide a more accurate figure.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF YUNFENG
Jack Ma co-founded Yunfeng more than
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At first glance, the recent raid on Capvision, a Shanghai consultancy, looks similar to the raids on foreign firms Mintz Group and Bain & Company. But there are reasons to separate Beijing's crackdown on Capvision. For starters, Capvision is Chinese and its shareholders and investors include a network of remarkably high profile and state-connected individuals and companies.