Alibaba's affluent: Instant riches for company workers

BEIJING – You might be millionaires, but please spend wisely. In recent months, as the IPO of Chinese Internet giant Alibaba loomed into view, founder Jack Ma kept warning his employees. "We've worked so hard, but not for the sake of turning into a bunch of uncouth new rich," he wrote in a late July e-mail.

With Friday's eye-popping, record-breaking $167 billion listing in New York, China's nouveau riche just swelled some more as more than 5,000 current and former Alibaba employees were selling their shares in this IPO. And they won't lack for places to splurge their new-found wealth.

"Neighbors, congratulations" screamed a real estate billboard Friday at the Xixifengqing development a single street away from Alibaba's headquarters in east China's Hangzhou city. "This group of potential buyers is rich enough to buy the bigger townhouse, which is around $1.3 million for a 3,230 square foot house," salesman Wang Mengzhou said. "I' m confident our sales will soar in the near future."

China's newly prosperous typically rush into real estate, cars and luxury items such as expensive watches, said Rupert Hoogewerf, the Shanghai-based publisher of Hurun, China's best-known "Rich List." "Inevitably, more sports cars will be sold in Hangzhou than before," said Hoogewerf, who expects Hangzhou may rise from fifth place on Hurun's ranking of Chinese cities with most millionaires, based on U.S. dollars.

"The biggest challenge to somebody who got rich overnight is the change in lifestyle. Some turn to gambling, others live a lifestyle not commensurate to their wealth," he said. "But these tech people are slightly different. They put a lot of heart and soul into the business," said Hoogewerf, who expects that many Alibaba millionaires will buy property but also re-invest a significant amount in other start-ups.

With his love of kung fu novels, and a blending of East and West, Jack Ma, now executive chairman, strives to give Alibaba a distinct corporate culture. In May, he told more than 4,000 employees at an Alibaba conference that he hopes the IPO doesn't mean "another batch of tuhao (slang for 'uncouth new rich') will appear in China", reported the Zhejiang Online website. Instead, Ma hoped for "a batch of genuinely noble people, a batch of people who are able to help others, and who are kind and happy."

Former Alibaba employees, many engaged in start-ups of their own, praise Ma's efforts to raise a higher-minded workforce. "I heard some outsiders call Alibaba staff 'tuhao', but that's not true," said Huang Haijun, 40, a senior manager of Alibaba's mobile market department who left in July after five years. "Most Alibaba people are rational and will use the money to start their own businesses," he said.