Eddie Wu, head of Alibaba’s e-commerce group, has been promoted as the company’s new CEO.
To respond to fast evolving technologies, Alibaba has announced a major management restructuring and a proposal to reorganize the company into six new business units. These measures are purportedly intended to stimulate growth at a time when China’s economy is declining.
Eddie Wu, the leader of Alibaba’s e-commerce division, has been named the company’s new CEO. Wu will succeed Daniel Zhang as CEO of the company. Zhang will lead Alibaba Cloud, the company’s cloud computing division. Within a year, Alibaba Cloud is anticipated to spin off and go public.
Alibaba Group’s current vice chairman, Joseph Tsai, will take over as chairman. Tsai is best known as the owner of the NBA basketball franchise Brooklyn Nets and the chairman of the Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba. With Alibaba’s restructure, five business divisions, excluding its core e-commerce operation, will be eligible to raise external funds and IPO. These modifications will go into effect on September 10.
Daniel Zhang, the CEO of Alibaba Group since 2015, will follow Joseph Tsai as chairman of the board. Zhang is well recognized for co-founding Alibaba’s Singles’ Day, the world’s largest online shopping event. These significant management changes at Alibaba Group are viewed as moves taken to ensure the company’s ability to compete and develop in the fast changing technology sector.
