One Of Alibaba's Top Executives To Form Family Office - Report

Tom Burroughes

27 April 2015

One of the senior executives at China’s e-commerce giant, , is creating a family office to oversee the wealth formed by the $25 billion IPO, the Wall Street Journal has reported, citing unnamed sources.

Alibaba’s executive vice chairman Joseph Tsai and other senior executives are setting up an office in Hong Kong, looking to start the family office in the summer, a source told the newspaper. Tsai has an approximate $6.5 billion stake in the firm, it said, citing the company’s prospectus.

If confirmed, such a venture highlights how fast-growing Asia, in which the overwhelming majority of companies are family-owned, is an underdeveloped market for family offices – and potential for their expansion is large.

The family office will be co-managed by Oliver Weisberg, a managing director in Citadel’s Hong Kong office, and Alexander West, the founding partner of Blue Pool Capital, a Hong Kong-based hedge fund backed by Tsai, the report said.

Citadel’s Weisberg will leave the Chicago hedge fund manager at the end of June after nearly 10 years, a spokesperson for the firm is reported as saying.

The hedge fund connection is notable because in the US, a number of hedge fund businesses have morphed into family offices by spinning off non-family money to avoid coming under new regulatory controls post-2008.

A source said Alibaba executive chairman Jack Ma may take part in investments. Ma has also been a backer of Yunfeng Capital, a private-equity investment firm focused on Chinese deals that has sometimes co-invested with Alibaba, the report added.