Alibaba: ex-boss Daniel Zhang finally leaves the group

2023-09-11 04:37:06

Published on September 11, 2023 at 6:36 a.m. Updated on September 11, 2023 at 6:37 a.m.

New twist in the profound reorganization of Alibaba, which has experienced considerable turbulence for several years. This Monday, the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba announced the surprise and permanent departure of its former CEO Daniel Zhang.

Alibaba announced in March the largest reorganization in its history. It provided for the division of the group into six distinct entities with the ambition of being able to list them on the stock exchange separately. And the internal replacement of its CEO Daniel Zhang, a historic figure in the company, who was to take charge this Monday of the lucrative cloud computing branch, now a separate entity.

Reshuffle at the top of the company

Ultimately it won’t be the case. “Our company’s board of directors expresses its deep appreciation to Daniel Zhang for his contributions to the Alibaba Group over the past sixteen years,” the company said in a statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, where it is listed. Alibaba gave no explanation for this turnaround, which caused the stock to fall by nearly 3.5% this Monday morning.

Eddie Yongming Wu is now Alibaba’s chairman, while Joseph C. Tsai becomes its chief executive. In addition to e-commerce and the cloud, Alibaba has activities in logistics but also media, entertainment and artificial intelligence.

Less pressure from Beijing

Alibaba had particularly been in the crosshairs of those in power in recent years to further regulate this key digital player in China. At the end of 2020, Beijing stopped a gigantic IPO (around $34 billion) in Hong Kong by Ant Group, the finance and payment subsidiary of Alibaba, 48 hours before the event.

The following month, Alibaba was the target of an investigation for obstruction of competition. These setbacks had severely penalized its profitability in 2022. However, the Chinese government seems to be letting go in recent months and adopting a more conciliatory attitude towards the sector, in a context of economic slowdown.

With AFP

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