Alibaba vs AXA: Founders, CEOs and History

Company facts

Founders

CEOs and their tenures

Timeline: Alibaba and AXA side by side

1. 1817AXA

   Founding of the Compagnie d'Assurances Mutuelles contre l'Incendie

   Jacques-Théodore le Carpentier and 17 other property owners in Rouen set up a mutual fire insurance company, the earliest predecessor of AXA. It stayed a Normandy mutual, later called Ancienne Mutuelle, for more than a century.

2. 1975AXA

   Claude Bébéar becomes chief executive

   Bébéar, recruited in 1958 by André Sahut d'Izarn, took over the Anciennes Mutuelles group in 1975 after Sahut d'Izarn's death and the settlement of a strike that had paralysed the company in April 1974.

3. 1982AXA

   Takeover of the Drouot Group

   Bébéar took control of the Drouot Group, then the leading private French insurance group, and became its chairman alongside his role at Mutuelles Unies.

4. 1985AXA

   Creation of the AXA name

   The group adopted the invented name AXA, short and pronounceable in any language, and Bébéar moved from running the insurance companies to chairing the group.

5. 1986AXA

   Acquisition of the Présence Group

   AXA bought the Présence Group in April 1986, continuing the consolidation of French insurers.

6. 1988AXA

   Merger with Compagnie du Midi

   The merger with Compagnie du Midi made AXA the second-largest French insurance group behind UAP and brought Equity and Law, then the sixth-largest life insurer in the United Kingdom. Bébéar was elected Manager of the Year the same year.

7. 1991AXA

   Control of The Equitable in the United States

   After a failed attempt to buy Farmers, AXA agreed in July 1991 to demutualise and take control of The Equitable, then the fifth-largest life insurer in the United States, which also brought Alliance Capital Management.

8. 1996AXA

   Acquisition of UAP

   AXA bought UAP, a French insurer twice its size, doubling its French business and reaching critical mass in the United Kingdom, Belgium and Germany. The merger took effect in 1997.

9. 1999Alibaba

   Alibaba.com Launched

   Jack Ma and 17 co-founders launch Alibaba.com from a Hangzhou apartment with $60,000 in pooled savings, creating a B2B online marketplace connecting Chinese manufacturers with international buyers.

10. 1999Alibaba

    First Major Investment from SoftBank

    Masayoshi Son invests $20 million in Alibaba in a meeting reportedly lasting five minutes, alongside $5 million from Goldman Sachs, providing survival capital through the imminent dot-com crash.

11. 1999AXA

    Guardian Royal Exchange and Nippon Dantai

    Guardian Royal Exchange joined AXA in early 1999, adding scale in United Kingdom property, casualty and health insurance, and AXA took control of Nippon Dantai, then the thirteenth-largest life insurer in Japan.

12. 2001Alibaba

    Gold Supplier Program Launch

    Alibaba launches the Gold Supplier verified membership program at $3,000 per year, generating approximately $10 million in first-year revenue and proving the B2B marketplace model's commercial viability.

13. 2003Alibaba

    Taobao Launches to Challenge eBay

    Alibaba secretly develops and launches Taobao, a consumer-to-consumer marketplace offered free to both buyers and sellers, directly targeting eBay's Chinese market position. Within three years, Taobao surpasses eBay's Chinese market share.

14. 2004Alibaba

    Alipay Escrow Service Created

    Alibaba creates Alipay as a payment escrow solution for Taobao transactions, holding buyer funds until delivery confirmation before releasing payment to sellers solving the trust barrier that was limiting online commerce adoption.

15. 2006AXA

    Acquisition of Winterthur

    AXA agreed to buy Winterthur from Credit Suisse for ~$14.8 billion (CHF 12.3 billion), about $8.93 billion (EUR 7.9 billion) in cash, strengthening its position in Switzerland, Germany and central and eastern Europe.

16. 2008Alibaba

    Tmall (Taobao Mall) Launch

    Alibaba launches a premium B2C marketplace initially called Taobao Mall (later rebranded Tmall), allowing established brands to operate official storefronts with higher trust credentials and enabling Alibaba to serve the premium consumer segment.

17. 2009Alibaba

    Alibaba Cloud Founded

    Alibaba launches Alibaba Cloud (Aliyun) as a cloud computing business, a decade ahead of many enterprise adoption cycles, positioning it to become Asia Pacific's dominant cloud provider.

18. 2011Alibaba

    First Singles' Day Shopping Festival

    Alibaba transforms the informal 'Singles' Day' celebration on November 11 into a promotional shopping event on Taobao and Tmall, generating ~$130 million (936 million yuan) in sales a figure that would grow more than 100-fold in subsequent years.

19. 2011AXA

    Sale of AXA Canada

    AXA sold its Canadian operations to Intact Financial Corp. for ~$1.87 billion (C$2.6 billion) as part of a portfolio review.

20. 2014Alibaba

    Record-Breaking NYSE IPO

    Alibaba completes its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange on September 19, 2014, raising $25 billion the largest IPO in US stock market history at that time at a valuation of approximately $168 billion.

21. 2018AXA

    Acquisition of XL Group

    AXA bought XL Group for $15.3 billion in cash, shifting the group toward commercial property and casualty lines and creating the AXA XL platform.

22. 2019Alibaba

    Dual Listing on Hong Kong Stock Exchange

    Alibaba completes a secondary listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, raising an additional $13 billion and broadening its investor base among Asian institutional and retail investors, reducing dependence on US capital markets.

23. 2021Alibaba

    Record Antitrust Fine

    Chinese regulators impose a 18.23 billion yuan ($2.8 billion USD) antitrust fine on Alibaba following a months-long investigation into its 'choose one from two' exclusivity practices at the time, the largest antitrust fine in Chinese regulatory history.

24. 2023Alibaba

    Six-Business-Unit Restructuring Announced

    Alibaba announces its most significant organizational restructuring, dividing the company into six independent business units each with its own CEO and board: Taobao Tmall Group, Cloud Intelligence Group, Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group, Cainiao S…

25. 2024AXA

    Launch of the Unlock the Future plan

    With its 2023 results in February 2024 AXA presented a 2024 to 2026 plan targeting underlying earnings per share growth of 6% to 8% a year, an underlying return on equity of 14% to 16% and a new capital management policy.

26. 2025AXA

    Sale of AXA Investment Managers to BNP Paribas

    AXA completed the sale of AXA Investment Managers to BNP Paribas Cardif on July 1, 2025 for ~$5.76 billion (EUR 5.1 billion) in cash, a total transaction value of ~$6.1 billion (EUR 5.4 billion), and signed a long-term agreement for BNP Paribas to manage a lar…

27. 2025AXA

    Death of founder Claude Bébéar

    AXA announced on November 4, 2025 that Claude Bébéar, its founder and Honorary Chairman, had died at the age of 90. He ran the group from 1975 to 2000 and created the AXA name in 1985.

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