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Alibaba announced major leadership changes on Tuesday, with CEO and chairman Daniel Zhang planning to step down this yr and get replaced by veteran Chinese tech giants.
Eddie Yongming Wu will take over as CEO and Joe Tsai will take over as president on September 10.
Each directors are Alibaba veterans and close confidants of Alibaba’s billionaire founder Jack Ma.
But who exactly are they and what do their appointments mean for Alibaba’s future?
Eddie Wu, future CEO
Eddie Wu is one in every of the co-founders of Alibaba, who first served because the Group’s Chief Operating Officer.
Wu was also the chief technology officer of key firms including Taobao and Alipay, a mobile payment service run by Ant Group, an affiliate of Alibaba. He was chargeable for Alibaba’s monetization platform on Taobao and Tmall, and led efforts to push the Taobao mobile app that brought the corporate into the smartphone era.
“The appointment of Eddie Wu as CEO should come as no big surprise. He co-founded Alibaba and played a key role in each advancing the technology and monetizing Taobao and Alipay,” Jacob Cooke, CEO of WPIC, an e-commerce and marketing firm that helps foreign brands sell in China, told CNBC.
“His elevation to group CEO is a natural transition and signals the unwavering importance of e-commerce on the corporate’s roadmap,” added Cooke.
Joe Tsai, future chairman
Alibaba’s other co-founder, Joe Tsai, was named the corporate’s chief financial officer until 2013 and currently serves as executive vp. He is also the president of Alibaba Cainiao’s logistics unit, in addition to a member of the Taobao and Tmall divisions.
Joe Tsai will take over as CEO of Alibaba after current chairman and CEO Daniel Zhang steps down.
Jp Yim | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty’s paintings
Other than his business at Alibaba, Tsai also owns the Brooklyn Nets basketball team within the US and is often seen as a more international executive.
“The appointment of the internationally oriented Tsai as CEO suits perfectly with the external strategy Alibaba has recently adopted, with major investments in Lazada and recently announced plans to open a neighborhood version of Tmall in Europe,” said Cooke.
Lazada is a Singapore-based e-commerce company owned by Alibaba that has been key to its international expansion in Southeast Asia. Individually, Alibaba CEO Michael Evans said last week that the corporate would go live local versions of the Tmall e-commerce service in Europe.
Time of changes
It has been a tumultuous two and a half years for Alibaba, starting with the suspension Ant Group’s blockbuster IPO in November 2020 after failing to satisfy regulators.
The Chinese government has tightened regulations on the country’s tech sector in areas starting from competition to data protection. In April 2021, regulators imposed an enormous 18.23 billion yuan ($2.5 billion) antitrust superb on Alibaba.
The corporate is affected by a slowdown in growth as a result of the slowing Chinese economy and increasing competition from rivals akin to JD.com and Pinduoduo. Its key cloud division, to which outgoing CEO Zhang will devote all his time, saw revenue decline within the March quarter.
Tsai and Wu will attempt to revive the corporate’s growth in a still difficult macroeconomic environment.
“I do not think the reshuffling says much about Alibaba’s business focus, nor do I believe it’s going to have a big impact on the corporate’s bottom line,” Xin Sun, senior lecturer in Chinese and East Asian business at King’s College London, told CNBC via e-mail. email.
“In spite of everything, an important drivers behind an organization’s performance are structural, akin to the disintegration of its ecosystem, an increasingly complex regulatory environment, and fierce competition from rivals. Nothing has modified”.