Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group on Tuesday announced a surprise succession plan. According to this succession plan, e-commerce executive Eddie Yongming Wu will replace Daniel Zhang as the CEO of the company. As soon as the succession plan is affected, Zhang will fully focus on the group's cloud intelligence unit.
Since December, Zhang has been serving as the Alibaba Group CEO and chairman as well as the head of Alibaba's cloud intelligence unit. Executive Vice Chairman Joseph Tsai will succeed Zhang and rise to the position of the chairman, the company statement read.
This succession announcement comes on the back of the group's decision, which was unveiled in March this year, of splitting the company into six business groups. Alibaba explained then that this move, which was touted to be one of the most significant reorganisation plans in the company's history, would allow each business group to seek outside funding for expansion, and go public.
"This is the right time for me to make a transition, given the importance of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group as it progresses towards a full spin-off. I look forward to working closely with Joe and Eddie in the coming months to ensure a seamless transition," Zhang said in a statement.
Commenting on Wu, Joseph Tsai said the former was instrumental in developing the company’s technology-based platforms. Tsai further said that Eddie Wu led the creation of primary moentisation platform on Taobao and Tmall.
He said: “As chief technology officer of key businesses including Taobao and Alipay during Alibaba’s critical phases of development, Eddie was instrumental in architecting our technology platforms and guiding our strategic direction. He led the creation of our proprietary monetization platform on Taobao and Tmall and drove the launch of the Mobile Taobao App to propel our company to the mobile-first era. I look forward to working with Eddie to spark our next phase of growth through technology and innovation”.
Eddie Yongming Wu is one of Alibaba's co-founders, and a member of the Alibaba Partnership and chairman of Taobao and Tmall Group since May this year. Wu was also the company's technology director during its inception in 1999. Alibaba's another co-founder is the Chinese business magnate, Jack Ma. Jack Ma disappeared from public eye in 2020 after he was seen to criticise Chinese regulators. Since then, the mercurial business tycoon has been travelling outside the country, with very infrequent appearances in the Chinese mainland.
Wu served as Alipay's chief technology officer from December 2005, became business director of Alibaba's monetisation platform Alimama in November and was promoted to its general manager in December 2007. In September 2008, he became chief technology officer of Taobao, and in October 2011 he took on the role of head of Alibaba Group’s search, advertising and mobile business.
Wu also served as director of Alibaba Health Information Technology Limited from April 2015 to October 2021 and chairman of Alibaba Health from April 2015 to March 2020. From September 2014 to September 2019, he was special assistant to Alibaba Group’s board chairman.
In August 2015, he founded Vision Plus Capital, a venture capital firm focused on investing in advanced technologies, enterprise services and digital healthcare. He graduated from the College of Information Engineering of Zhejiang University of Technology in June 1996.
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