Alibaba names new chairman, CEO in surprise succession plan
BNN Bloomberg
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is replacing eight-year veteran chief Daniel Zhang at the helm of a Chinese e-commerce leader bleeding market share and struggling to revive growth in the post-COVID era.
Executive Vice Chairman Joseph Tsai, a longtime confidant of billionaire co-founder Jack Ma, will take Zhang’s position as the chairman of the board. Eddie Wu, now chairman of Alibaba’s core Taobao and Tmall online commerce divisions, will take over as chief executive of the US$240 billion company.
Zhang’s unexpected departure comes after Alibaba announced a six-way restructuring to try and juice growth and create a family of standalone leaders in businesses from cloud computing and logistics to international commerce. He unveiled his grand vision in detail just as Alibaba posted its third consecutive quarter of single-digit revenue growth, reinforcing concerns that a Chinese consumer spending rebound may be farther out than anticipated.
Alibaba’s shares fell 2.4 per cent during premarket trading in New York on Tuesday.
