The former boss of technology giant Alibaba, Daniel Zhang, has unexpectedly left the Chinese company. Alibaba’s board of directors thanked Zhang for his 16 years of service to the group in a statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Sunday evening. No reason for his departure was given.
In June, Alibaba announced that Zhang would be replaced as CEO by Eddie Wu in September. However, Zhang was expected to remain a board member and lead the cloud computing division, which is being spun off as part of a major restructuring, the announcement said at the time. Alibaba has now announced that it will stick to its plans to spin off cloud computing.
Zhang will continue to work for Alibaba, according to an internal letter to employees. This is done by “channeling his expertise in a different way”, Reuters quotes from the letter. Alibaba will also invest $1 billion in a technology fund that Zhang will set up. The company also gave him the title ’emeritus’, a first in the company’s history.
Zhang spent eight years at the helm of Alibaba and was largely responsible for the rise of the former online trading company from Hangzhou in eastern China into one of the largest and most broadly positioned IT groups in China.
In addition to online commerce and cloud computing, Alibaba is also active in logistics, media and the development of artificial intelligence (AI).
However, in recent years, Alibaba has suffered from deteriorating consumer confidence. Furthermore, the Chinese government has tightened its belt on the entire technology industry with ever new regulations, fines and harassment.
At the end of March, the group announced a fundamental realignment. Alibaba will be split into six largely independent business groups.
Alibaba founder Jack Ma has been keeping a low profile for some time. Alibaba’s financial arm, the Ant Group, was the first major online company against which Chinese authorities took action at the end of 2020. At the time, they banned Ant Group’s planned IPO. Ma had previously publicly criticized financial regulators.
(dsc/sda/awp/afp)
Source: Watson
I’m Ella Sammie, author specializing in the Technology sector. I have been writing for 24 Instatnt News since 2020, and am passionate about staying up to date with the latest developments in this ever-changing industry.
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