2018 has been an eventful year for the business world. And who made headlines in 2018?

This year may be seen as the end of an era, as Jack Ma, announced that he is stepping down as chairman of the Alibaba Group – the Chinese e-commerce giant he founded 19 years ago and helped build into a 420-billion-U.S.-dollar company. Ma plans to focus on education and philanthropy after he steps down as chairman. 

Another Chinese business figure made the headlines for very different reasons. Richard Liu, founder of China's online giant JD.com, was accused of rape in the U.S. He was released the next day and U.S. prosecutors announced this month they were dropping the charges due to insufficient evidence. 

But the damage has been done – JD.com's Nasdaq-listed stock is still down more than 30 percent since his arrest. His personal fame is also tarnished by the affair. 

Another CEO has been arrested. Carlos Ghosn, who brought together Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors, was arrested in November 2018. He is accused of concealing millions of U.S. dollars of personal income and using company assets for his own benefit. Ghosn's long Nissan career is over. The future of the alliance is also in doubt.

It's been an eventful year for Elon Musk, co-founder and CEO at Tesla. Musk leads Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), where he oversees the development and manufacturing of advanced rockets and spacecraft. In 2018, SpaceX launched its Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time. And Tesla started turning a profit. 

But it wasn't all positive. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Musk for securities fraud over a market-moving tweet in August about possibly taking Tesla private. And what made him even more controversial? He smoked weed on air.

2018 was also a tough year for Facebook, and its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The social networking giant and Zuckerberg himself were hit by the Cambridge Analytica scandal, testimony on Capitol Hill, and then a massive hack affecting 29 million people. In his year-end post on Friday, Zuckerberg wrote: "We've fundamentally altered our DNA" to focus more on handling the bad stuff that happened on Facebook. 

Dai Wei, founder of China's leading bike-sharing app, ofo, is facing serious financial problems. At its high, ofo was valued at two billion U.S. dollars. Its investors include Alibaba and Didi Chuxing. 

But now, Dai is on a government blacklist for unpaid bills. Millions of riders who placed deposits are demanding their money back. The downfall of ofo raised concerns of the business model of many venture capital-backed Chinese tech startups burning money to acquire new users.