Tencent Co-Founder Pony Ma Vents Out Again - This Time Against Lazy And Dishonest Employees

Tencent Holding Ltd's TCEHY co-founder Pony Ma expressed frustration about slackening, ignorant, and unscrupulous employees.

The usually mild-mannered tycoon helped create China's largest internet firm away from the spotlight, Bloomberg reports. 

Last week, Ma summoned a town-hall meeting to deliver a blistering attack against how staff managed businesses from social media and content to gaming. 

"You can't even survive as a business, yet you're chilling on the weekends, playing ball," Ma told his audience.

Chinese internet behemoths Tencent and Alibaba Group Holding Limited BABA saw growth fade over the past year after a sweeping crackdown on private enterprise.

Ma criticized the bread-and-butter gaming division for squandering away money to acquire users for hastily churned-out titles rather than focusing on quality. 

Ma accused employees of "superficial" reforms to spending and costs. Ma even said corruption remained rife across the ranks. 

He accused the nascent cloud arm of a wasteful market-share grab against Alibaba and Huawei Technologies Co.

Ma reserved his harshest comments for Tencent's aging social network and content empire, which lost ground to mobile-native rivals like TikTok owner ByteDance Ltd. 

Tencent's years-old news service is now finally in the black after some job cuts, but it could very well be culled pending result improvement, Ma said.

WeChat's short-video feed was the only silver lining Ma said. Tencent focused on growing that TikTok-style feature yet to monetize content with e-commerce and advertising offerings. 

Advertising revenue generated by the new service should surpass 1 billion yuan ($143 million) in the fourth quarter. Ma emphasized aggressive cost cuts in 2023, which should become a habit.

In May, Ma shared a viral opinion piece on the economic costs of China's strict Covid Zero measures originally posted by history author Zhang Mingyang.

Ma's gesture marked a rare show of frustration after his company struggled to grow during the first quarter. Ma called out economists, academics, and even average internet users for overlooking the economic impact of Beijing's harsh Covid measures.

Price Action: TCEHY shares traded higher by 0.07% at $40.68 on the last check Thursday.