Before Alibaba Group Holdings went public in 2014, there were no agency disputes. When Alibaba decided to go public in 2014 and be listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the largest initial public offering (IPO), the e-commerce giant was accused of lacking transparency in the IPO and weak in following the rule of law. Alibaba was accused of selling counterfeit products in and out of China that were seized by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (Lin, 2016) . Taobao, an e-commerce platform under Alibaba, was listed as notorious for selling pirated goods. There were concerns about the role of variable interest entities and the limited shareholding rights in Alibaba. On one occasion, Alibaba agreed to loan its co-founder Simon Xie $1 billion through another company he owned with Ma to purchase a minority stake in an internet TV firm called Wasu Media Holding Co. Alibaba then reported that they had reached an agreement with the company. However, there was no mention of the loan or investment, which raised disturbing questions on corporate governance (Lin, 2016) .
Today, there are not agency problems with Alibaba. In a 2015 presser, Jack Ma stated that the conflict between Alibaba and China State Administration of Industry and Commerce had been solved, and they were a result of "some top" government officials who were not in support of SAIC's actions. Ma also said that the company had employed 2,000 employees to help monitor the e-commerce platform for counterfeits and has sent more than 400 individuals to prison. Since the IPO in 2014, the agency relationship between Alibaba has its stakeholders has not changed (Lin, 2016) . Alibaba still maintains its structure of keeping its dual-class governance structure with other Chinese companies such as Baidu. Jack Ma has been protective of this structure and is determined to keep it as changing it would make the management team lose confidence in him.
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References
Lin, L. (2016). Open Sesame: The Myth of Alibaba's Extreme Corporate Governance and Control. 10 Brooklyn Journal Of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law , 437-471. Retrieved 18 April 2020, from.
