(Reuters) – Alibaba Group said on Tuesday its CEO and chairman Daniel Zhang will step down from those roles to focus on its cloud division as the Chinese e-commerce giant moves ahead with a plan to split into six business units.
The CEO role will be handed over to Eddie Yongming Wu, chairman of Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall Group, while Executive Vice Chairman Joseph Tsai will take over from Zhang as chairman.
Here’s what people are saying about the reshuffle:
JACOB COOKE, CO-FOUNDER AND CEO OF WPIC MARKETING + TECHNOLOGIES, AN E-COMMERCE CONSULTING FIRM BASED IN BEIJING:
“These leadership changes do not necessarily signal a major strategic shift within Alibaba, given that the individuals are co-founders, close associates of Jack Ma, and being promoted internally. If anything, it emphasises the increasing importance of AI in the company’s focus, while also underscoring that e-commerce is the core business unit.
“For governance reasons and also to maximize value from the re-organization, they needed separate boards and management groups between Alibaba and the cloud spin-off.”
BRIAN WONG, A FORMER ALIBABA EMPLOYEE AND AUTHOR OF “THE TAO OF ALIBABA”:
“The appointment of Daniel to focus on running cloud is really a show of confidence and trust in him to take the most precious business and run with it to develop it in the right way given this age of generative AI. The idea or expectation that one person could manage the businesses crown jewel Cloud and at the same time manage the entire Alibaba Group is an unreasonable expectation.
“This is really a vote of trust and confidence in his ability as an operator … but at the same time helping him to free up his time and resources by separating the two CEO roles.”
OSHADHI KUMARASIRI, LIGHTSTREAM RESEARCH, WHO PUBLISHES ON SMARTKARMA:
“It surprised me that he (Zhang) decided to relinquish the positions of CEO and chairman. We think in terms of information security, Cloud holds greater significance compared to the rest of Alibaba therefore it kind of makes sense to put someone like him in the Cloud business.”
XIAOYAN WANG, ANALYST AT 86RESEARCH:
“Heading such a big company is not easy for anyone. So I think it’s a ‘wait and see’. No big impact on share price in the near term. The company is still exploring new changes, including management and business operation. There may be more follow-up moves.”
JIALONG SHI, HEAD OF CHINA INTERNET EQUITY RESEARCH, NOMURA
“This will not have any meaningful impact on Alibaba’s businesses. While this change is unexpected by the market, we think effectively, the out-going CEO Daniel Zhang has decided to step down as CEO of the group and we expect he will be solely focused on AliCloud.
“Alibaba management has made it clear that it’s the CEOs of the newly established subsidiaries that will take charge of running the businesses of these six subsidiaries.
“It’s not surprising that Daniel Zhang has decided to dedicate himself to running AliCloud. My guess is that he feels running AliCloud on the front line is more exciting than continuing to stay on as CEO of the Group.”
“Eddie Wu is one of the founders and he should know the business and the management team very well.
“He doesn’t seem to have been in the driver’s seat of the Alibaba Group for the past few years … but the Group CEO role now does not seem to require the successor to have such a strong mandate to run the business, because it’s now the CEOs of the subsidiaries that are being trusted to do that job.”
(Reporting by Casey Hall in Shanghai, Josh Ye in Hong Kong, Scott Murdoch in Sydney; Compiled by Anne Marie Roantree)
