It's an unusual move, but the whole IPO is odd.

IPO at its relative late stage with a gigantic valuation, leaving little for retail investors to gain from. And its whole IPO process is preferential treatment at its finest, almost looked like Jack Ma can do whatever he wanted.

Ant and Ma's condescending posture did draw a fairly big backlash, it's certain pratices border on non-compliance, and Ma's beneficiaries are mostly from the last leadership, these probably helped put a brake on it.