This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Jack Ma’s AI comeback’
Marc Filippino
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Tuesday, March 18th, and this is your FT News Briefing.
Russia has reopened to the west a little bit, and Jack Ma is making a comeback. Plus, European companies may wanna think twice before adding a secondary listing in the US.
Nikou Asgari
Executives say we’re going to add a listing in New York, and all of these things are going to magically improve, and we found that that’s not entirely the case.
Marc Filippino
I’m Marc Filippino and here’s the news you need to start your day.
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Marc Filippino
Russian President Vladimir Putin is allowing some western investors to offload Russian securities. Putin published the decree on Monday. In it, he said that Jane Street, GMO and Franklin Templeton will be allowed to sell shares in Russian companies to a US hedge fund. Putin banned international investors from dealing in shares or bonds of Russian banks and energy companies after the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Now the timing of yesterday’s decree is interesting. Putin is expected to talk with US President Donald Trump today about a potential ceasefire.
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Marc Filippino
A lot of executives say that a New York stock market presence is a sure-fire route to a higher share price, and that’s led many European companies to add a US listing in recent years. But it turns out that assumption may be wrong. Nikou Asgari is the FT’s digital markets correspondent, and she joins me now. Hey, Nikou.
Nikou Asgari
Hi.
Marc Filippino
All right, so tell me a little bit about your research on this, Nikou. What companies did you analyse, and what did you find out?
Nikou Asgari
We looked at 12 companies that all have European listings since 2016, and that since then have added a listing in New York. So they’ve kept the European listing and they’ve added one in New York to see what the impact of that New York listing has been, whether they saw an increase in their valuations, in their increase in their liquidity, and if there were more analysts covering the companies. These are all things that executives say, you know, we’re going to add a listing in New York, we’re gonna move to New York, and all of these things are going to magically improve. And we found that that’s not entirely the case.
Marc Filippino
Yeah, just give me some background about why these companies have been setting their sights on the US stock market in the first place.
Nikou Asgari
Yeah, so for a number of years now, European executives, European investors have been looking at, you know, the rise of the US stock market, which hasn’t really been mirrored in Europe or in the UK in the same way. And so companies have either just IPO’d in the US entirely or have added and moved their listings from Europe to New York to get a slice of that pie, essentially, to get more investors to look at them, to invest in them, to help boost their share price, their valuations. And so we thought to take a sort of empirical look at the ones that have done this and see how it’s played out.
Marc Filippino
Got it. And your analysis is saying, hey, not so fast, maybe it’s not that simple.
Nikou Asgari
Yeah, absolutely. It’s not for every company that if they move to the US, then all of their valuations, their number of analysts, their liquidity will immediately dramatically improve. It’s not a sort of one-size-fits-all, if you like. There’s a lot of nuance in this.
Marc Filippino
But are there any potential upsides to a new listing for European companies in the US? I mean, I have to imagine they were drawn here for a reason.
Nikou Asgari
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for two-thirds of the companies that we looked at, their liquidity in their US listing improved compared to the liquidity in their European listing, which speaks to the point that the US stock market is deeper, is more liquid. Now there is nuance to mention here, which is the larger companies, which we defined as those with a market capitalisation of more than $10bn. They perform slightly better than smaller companies. And that, the analysts we spoke to, put down to the fact that US investors recognise bigger names. So you’ve got companies like CRH, like Flutter, like Ferguson, which did do better. They recognise those much more than the small European companies that they might never have heard of.
Marc Filippino
So then, Nikou, what are the broader implications of these findings?
Nikou Asgari
The issue of the UK and Europe’s competitive capital markets has been on the agenda for policymakers, for politicians, for a good few years now. They’re all trying quite desperately to revive the capital markets to make growing a company, listing a company and keeping your company in Europe or in the UK much more attractive. And so I guess this just sort of adds to the questions that they might have saying, hey if you’re a European or UK company, the grass is not always greener in the US and, actually, you should stick around in Europe and the UK for longer, build your business here and contribute to the UK, to the European economy by doing so.
Marc Filippino
That’s the FT’s Nikou Asgari. Thanks, Nikou.
Nikou Asgari
Thank you.
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Marc Filippino
The UK’s financial watchdog is set to ban Crispin Odey from the sector. He’ll also get a fine of nearly £2mn for a, quote, ‘lack of integrity’ for his conduct. The high-profile founder of the hedge fund Odey Asset Management fell from grace two years ago. That was after the FT detailed allegations of sexual harassment and assault. Odey has disputed them. Now, the Financial Conduct Authority’s moves here aren’t based on the accusations themselves, but actually on Odey’s alleged attempts to hold up his hedge fund’s efforts to address complaints about him. The regulator said Odey wasn’t, quote, fit and proper person to perform any function related to regulated activities. Odey has said he will challenge the decision in court.
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Marc Filippino
An ecommerce giant in China looks to be making a comeback, this time on the coattails of artificial intelligence. I’m talking about Jack Ma and his company Alibaba. At one point, it was hard to escape them, as my colleague, Zijing Wu, explains . . .
Zijing Wu
Jack Ma was once seen as China’s poster child for the tech wonder. Alibaba at its peak was valued at more than $700bn, and it’s one of the most valuable companies in the world, not only in China.
Marc Filippino
But a clampdown by Chinese regulators sent the company’s shares spiralling, and Alibaba struggled for years.
Zijing Wu
Many people would point to the failed Ant financial IPO in 2020. So Ant financial was set to raise $34.5bn from the world’s largest IPO around that time, and it was called off at the very last minute. Regulators later said it was because Alibaba had some shortcomings that they have discovered, but it was actually because Jack gave a speech a few days before the listing, and he was talking about China’s banking system and how it was operating like pawn shops. So that really made Beijing angry and that caused a lot of political issues.
Marc Filippino
The ecommerce giant had to pay a lot of hefty fines, and Jack Ma faded from view for a while, until recently. Now, there are signals that the tech wonder might be back on Beijing’s good side.
Zijing Wu
Well, a key signal was earlier this year, when Jack Ma was at a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. So he was sitting in the front row together with other businessmen like Tencent’s Pony Ma, and a few other significant Chinese business people. So that was seen as a symbolic move from Beijing to show people that Jack is now politically safe. And also that’s a sign seen by market as Jack coming out of his political exile.
Marc Filippino
And it looks to be all thanks to Beijing’s interest in artificial intelligence.
Zijing Wu
Alibaba started investing into AI-related research as early as 2019, but their serious investment really started after Jack saw the potential of AI after ChatGPT was launched, which is also in line with Beijing’s strategy to use AI to help the economy, which is slowing down.
Marc Filippino
It’s not just Jack Ma though, Alibaba is on the up and up again too.
Zijing Wu
So Alibaba’s Qwen model, which is as open source as DeepSeek’s models, is actually seen as one of the most advanced models from China, especially the latest version. It’s a very small model and it’s basically performing almost as good as DeepSeek, but with even lower costs. It’s more efficient. Investors have realised how advanced Alibaba has become in terms of its AI capability, which is why Alibaba stock rose almost 70 per cent this year. And this is after DeepSeek’s release of its R1 reasoning model. And that’s the moment when investors realise Chinese tech overall have been significantly undervalued.
Marc Filippino
Zijing Wu is the FT’s Asia tech correspondent.
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Marc Filippino
You can read more on all these stories for free when you click the links in our show notes. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Check back tomorrow for the latest business news.
