Alibaba’s Jack Ma Fears Growing Too Fast

SHANGHAI — Jack Ma, founder and chief executive officer of Alibaba, believes the company’s greatest threat is to itself. In a 30-minute interview with British business magnate Sir Martin Sorrell at the GREAT Festival of Creativity here Monday night, Ma said: “There is no [outside] company we fear — we fear ourselves. We are too young. We are [growing] too fast.” His words were prescient, in light of the current investigation into Alibaba’s business practices. The inquiry by Chinese regulators follows revelations from the State Administration for Industry & Commerce that the Internet conglomerate has hosted illegal business deals on its sales platform, Tmall.com. The company also has caught the attention of the U.S. authorities for its alleged dealings with a Chinese regulator just months after its stock market debut. Ma’s tone was humble, echoing previous recent public statements. “We are big but we are not as strong as people think. We are only 15 years old and the average age [of our team] is 27. No one has experience of how to do this business because our business [was not around] before,” he said. At the event, which is expected to generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the U.K. economy over the next five

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