China's Ant explores ways for Jack Ma to exit as Beijing piles pressure

The company hoped Ma's stake, worth billions of dollars, could be sold to existing investors in Ant or its e-commerce affiliate Alibaba Group Holding Ltd without involving any external entity, one of the sources with company ties said

(Subscribe to our Today's Cache newsletter for a quick snapshot of top 5 tech stories. Click to subscribe for free.) Ant Group is exploring options for founder Jack Ma to divest his stake in the financial technology giant and give up control, as meetings with Chinese regulators signalled to the company that the move could help draw a line under Beijing's scrutiny of its business, according to a source familiar with regulators' thinking and two people with close ties to the company. Reuters is for the first time reporting details of the latest round of meetings and the discussions about the future of Ma's control of Ant, exercised through a complicated structure of investment vehicles.