[ad_1]
BEIJING – Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba announced Monday that its CEO, Daniel Zhang, would replace Jack Ma as chairman of the board next September.
Ma, worth an estimated $ 36 billion, will remain at the head of one of Asia's largest Internet companies for the next year to ease the transition for Zhang, who joined Alibaba 11 years ago.
Then, Ma, 54, will leave Alibaba's board of directors after its annual shareholders' meeting in 2020, relinquishing the exceptional responsibilities of the group's senior executives.
"This transition demonstrates that Alibaba has taken a new step in corporate governance from a people-based enterprise to systems of organizational excellence and a culture of development." talents, "wrote Ma in a letter published Monday.
The businessman will continue to work for Alibaba as a "lifetime" advisor, the company said.
Ma, a former English professor who launched Alibaba with 17 of his students and friends and about $ 60,000, said he wanted to focus on philanthropy in education.
He described the decision as a return to his passion after running a business that transformed the way Chinese people shop, directing cash payments in the Asian country to irrelevance.
But Ma's surprise departure fueled speculation that his popularity had infuriated a government that does not like to share the spotlight.
Studies have shown that Rockstar entrepreneurs in China tend to be scrutinized, making them more likely to be investigated or stopped than those who avoid relentless media coverage. In recent years, state-backed media have harassed Alibaba for not having dried out counterfeiters on its platform and have pointed out that Ma had bought a $ 193 million mansion in Hong Kong.
"When your star starts to rise too high, the government likes to knock you down," said Shaun Rein, general manager of the China Market Research Group in Shanghai.
Ma alluded to the dangers of wealth.
"I think that among the richest men in China, few have a good chance of success," he told a group of rural teachers at a charity event in 2016.
Businesses in the country are facing increasing uncertainty as economic growth slows, debt increases, and the US prepares to impose an additional $ 200 billion tariff on Chinese imports. investment.
"Maybe he was smart to go out while he could," said veteran Chinese observer Isaac Stone Fish, a visiting scholar at the German Marshall Fund, a Washington think tank.
But Lei Jianping, a technology blogger from Beijing who follows Alibaba, said the succession plan will not change much. When Ma left his position as general manager in 2013, Mr. Lei said that he remained the face of the business. (Rein, the analyst in Shanghai, said other business leaders were known to feel aggrieved if they met Zhang but not Ma.)
"What's going on now will not change the fact that Alibaba is headed by Jack Ma," said Lei. "Jack Ma has given up that" in a title. "
According to analysts, when world leaders go to China, they usually want to meet two people: Chinese President Xi Jinping and the beloved leader of Alibaba, who came to symbolize the dream of misery. Ma grew up poor, failed twice on his college entrance exams, was rejected for a job at KFC and has always become one of the richest men in China.
Ma's influence goes beyond his country of origin.
He met with President Trump in July 2017 while Alibaba was looking to acquire Dallas-based Money Transfer Group, MoneyGram. (The agreement was blocked.) He also had dinner with Trade Secretary Wilbur Ross and President's daughter Ivanka Trump as part of a series of meetings to help repair relations between nations. .
Alibaba has developed over the past two decades to become a digital powerhouse, shipping parcels around the world and carrying supplies to remote areas of China. The company now has 524 million active users and had sales of nearly $ 40 billion last year.
Meanwhile, Ma has earned a reputation as a corporate benefactor. Jim Kim, President of the World Bank, congratulated Ma for personally giving computers to the villagers so that they could take orders for their resource-limited communities.
In the United States, Alibaba's parent company makes comparisons with Amazon.com. The company has e-commerce, online payment, entertainment, banking and cloud computing activities, as well as stakes in several Chinese media companies, such as Weibo, the country's response to Twitter.
(The CEO of Amazon.com, Jeffrey P. Bezos, is the owner of the Washington Post.)
In his Monday letter, Ma presented his retirement as a way to help the company continue to grow, arguing that he had reached the limits of his expertise.
The announcement was made during the National Teachers' Day in China, which takes place on Ma's birthday.
"Teachers always want their students to go beyond them," wrote Ma, "so for me and for the company, the responsibility is to let the young and the most talented take on leadership roles so that they inherit from us. mission". it's easy to do business anywhere. "
Luna Lin in Beijing and Hayley Tsukayama in San Francisco contributed to this report.
Read more:
The current coverage of postal correspondents around the world
Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay informed about foreign news
[ad_2]
Source link
