Alibaba Group to change CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors

Alibaba Group Holding announced about the departure of Daniel Zhang as CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors, who led the company for eight years. The post of CEO after his departure will be taken by Eddie Wu, who now leads the main divisions of Taobao and Tmall holding. Joseph Tsai, who is now Executive Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of Alibaba Group, will become Chairman of the Board of Directors. All changes will take place on September 10th.

According to analysts, Daniel Zhang’s resignation was rather unexpected, given that he recently presented a massive company restructuring program to stimulate growth and take a leading position in a number of areas. Meanwhile, as noted by the agency Bloomberg On the positive side, KGI Asia’s head of investment strategies, Kenny Wen, is that Alibaba’s new CEO and chairman of the board are “the co-founders of the company, and they are the closest people to Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba.” “This means that Ma remains the spiritual leader of Alibaba,” the expert notes. In his opinion, the change of leaders does not yet mean significant strategic changes.

According to the decision of the holding, Daniel Zhang, after leaving his high post, will lead the cloud technology division, which is developing very dynamically. Shares of Alibaba Group on the Hong Kong stock exchange react to the news about the change of leadership by falling by 1.5%.

Alena Miklashevskaya