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BEIJING – Jack Ma, the billionaire tycoon who has conquered China's growing wealth currents to build one of the world's largest e-commerce companies, plans to leave his role as Alibaba's executive chairman. Group Holding Ltd. to focus on philanthropy and other activities, according to someone familiar with the situation.
Mr. Ma should unveil his plans, including a timetable for the transition, Monday, at the age of 54, the person said. The person pointed out that Mr. Ma wants to ensure an orderly transition and plans to stay on the company's board of directors.
The New York Times reported earlier that Ma plans to withdraw on Monday.
During his years as head of Alibaba, Mr. Ma became China's most famous business leader, known for his charisma and dedication, and his mastery of English after years of teaching language and guiding American tourists. Lake in his hometown of Hangzhou.
"Overseas and home-grown Jack is the most recognizable symbol of the Internet explosion in China and more broadly the consumer boom in China," said Duncan Clark, business consultant in China and author of "Alibaba: the house that Jack built". to have an emblematic figure associated with these two major forces, which plans to give up its executive functions.
Mr. Clark noted, however, that Mr. Ma would still be likely to retain his influence within the company. "The title does not matter with Jack. He is a dominant figure in society, even though he is neither big nor cultivated in the traditional "boss feared" culture that characterizes many businesses here. "
Mr. Ma began a transition to leadership five years ago when he stepped down as Chief Executive Officer. The managing director of Alibaba is Daniel Zhang and the executive vice president is Joe Tsai. In July, Mr. Ma was Alibaba's fourth largest shareholder, with approximately 4% of the shares, behind Altaba Inc., the holding company that had left the company after selling most of its assets to Yahoo!
Verizon Communications
,
and
SoftBank Group
Corp.
Despite this, Mr. Ma and 35 other members of an entity called "Alibaba Partnership" still hold much of the company's decision-making process as part of its dual class shareholding structure, which allows them to exercise voting rights such as the appointment of directors despite their minority shareholding.
Since his resignation, the billionaire of charismatic technology has spent much of his time on the Alibaba campus in Hangzhou receiving visiting dignitaries or traveling around the world to discuss the causes he believes in. campus in August.
The Chinese founder of technology is also a strong advocate for education and entrepreneurship in China and beyond. He travels frequently to Africa, where he takes the time to meet young African founders and now offers an entrepreneurial prize.
Mr. Ma started as a teacher and education will be one of his main interests as he will eventually engage in Alibaba, said the character.
Mr. Ma, one of the richest people in China, is among the first in a generation of pioneers of the Internet in China.
Tencent Holdings
Ltd.
Pony Ma and
Baidu
Inc.
Robin Li. The former professor is known to be an eccentric leader, having disguised himself as a Terminator and Michael Jackson during corporate protests and last year he starred in a martial art film in which he has defeated stars like Jet Li.
Mr. Ma opened an online directory in 1995 and then founded
Alibaba.com
in his apartment, four years later – shortly before the global failure of the tooltip – in order to use the Internet to connect Chinese small businesses to larger and more distant markets.
His company dominates e-commerce in China through Taobao and Tmall online sales platforms, where Chinese consumers and businesses buy clothes, food products, electronics and other products. The company reported revenue of $ 11.83 billion in the second quarter, up 61% over the same period last year.
Alibaba is valued at around 420 billion dollars, rivaling
Amazon.com
Inc.
globally, and as Amazon has evolved into entertainment and cloud computing. Its annual net profit from the prior year was $ 10.2 billion.
With the online business as a base, Mr. Ma has moved Alibaba into various other activities, including entertainment and mobile payments.
He launched what became his Ant Financial spin-off with Alipay, initially an escrow service that would keep payments until buyers receive their products. Last year, it processed more payments than Mastercard and controlled the largest money fund in the world.
The success of Alibaba has also led to an increase in relations with the authoritarian Chinese government led by the Communist Party. Alibaba has data on hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens who use the company and its affiliate services to shop online, broadcast videos, pay rent, send text messages, comment on social networks and more. as part of a sophisticated national surveillance operation.
Alibaba and the other Chinese Internet giants benefited from trade policies protecting them from foreign competition and had little choice but to cooperate. The Wall Street Journal reported last year that Alibaba's sprawling campus in Hangzhou includes a police outpost where authorities can tap into information collected by the technology giant via its e-commerce and payment networks .
"The political and legal system of the future is inseparable from the Internet, inseparable from Big Data," Ma told a Communist Party commission charged with the application of the law. last year. He said technology will soon predict security threats. "The bad guys will not even be able to enter the place," he said.
The decision comes at a time of chaos for the Chinese e-commerce industry. The industry is facing a Chinese economy whose growth is slowing down, weighed down by government deleveraging and the uncertainty surrounding prolonged trade tensions with the United States.
JD.com
Inc.
Liu Qiangdong, suspected of rape last week in the United States, was arrested. He denied wrongdoing and was released without bail, while police continue his investigation.
Ma's transition is likely to have little impact on the day-to-day operations of the company, said Mitchell Green, founder and partner of Lead Edge Capital, a New York equity investment firm, noting that the company was headed by Mr. Tsai, Mr. Zhang, Wu Wu's chief financial officer for several years already.
Green remains optimistic about Alibaba's shares, adding that he had just bought more shares of the company on Thursday.
"These guys are the dominant leaders in China's retail and cloud computing. Ant Financial will also experience exponential growth over the next 20 years. If you believe that China is going to be bigger in 20 years than it is today, then that's the stock to own. "
The author, Mr. Clark, said that Ma's decision could be a sign of a change in the environment facing entrepreneurs in China, because large companies like Alibaba are influencing and challenging SOEs. traditional actors. For example, the Chinese authorities have begun to limit the activities that Ant Financial can carry out because they are more and more uncomfortable with the Ant scale.
Ma and Alibaba are indicators of "where China is heading in economic reforms but also deeper," Clark said. "Is there a problem now that oxygen for entrepreneurs is running out?"
-Yoko Kubota contributed to this article.
Write to Liza Lin at [email protected]
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