Friday, January 18, 2013

Alibaba reshuffles, Jack Ma steps down


News this week: Last week, China’s largest e-commerce company, Alibaba Group, announced it will undergo another major restructuring to adapt to China’s changing e-commerce environment and reaching the company’s goal of becoming an e-commerce “ecosystem”.

The latest Alibaba restructuring sees the company divided into 25 business units, which will be overseen by two committees – a strategic committee and an execution committee primarily made up of nine top company managers. The new units will include retail and wholesale e-commerce, data mining and cloud computing.

Alibaba Group’s CFO Joe Tsai, was quoted saying, “Rather than looking at six or seven big business groups, each of the 25 units could be a significant player in their industry and be very influential. For example, for the first time we have broken out the (online) travel category as a separate business unit on par with Tmall.”

In a separate announcement this week, Alibaba’s chairman and CEO Jack Ma confirmed he will step down as CEO of the company on 10th May 2013. Ma will remain as executive chairman of Alibaba to focus more on the company’s strategic direction, developing the company's managerial talent, and strengthening Alibaba’s social-responsibility efforts.

This post is excerpted from BSG's weekly e-newsletter which is part of our subscription research service, BSG Tracker. Visit our website to find out more about this service. You can also follow us on Twitter for all the latest updates.

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